A Corner of Poetry

Recently, I received a letter from a friend, in which was the beautiful poem "The Snow Arrives After Long Silence". It isn't snowing right now, of course, but the poem speaks so eloquently to the snow-lovers in the world that I just have to write it down here. So here it is, along with a poem that I wrote sometime last year:

The Snow Arrives After Long Silence 
The snow arrives after long silence
from its high home where nothing leaves
tracks or stains or keeps time.
The sky it fell from, pale as oatmeal,
bears up like sheep before shearing.


The cat at my window watches
amazed. So many feathers and no bird!
All day the snow sets its table
with clean linen, putting its house
in order. The hungry deer walk


on the risen loaves of snow.
You can follow the broken hearts
their hooves punch in its crust.
Night after night the big plows rumble
and bale it like dirty laundry


and haul it to the Hudson.
Now I can scan the sky for snow,
and the cool cheek it offers me,
and its body, thinned into petals,
and the still caves where it sleeps.
~Nancy Willard


Dawn Twilight
Mist, draping gracefully
from each quivering bough,
is stirred to life by
the twilight breeze awakening
in a pale opalescent sky.


One distant star,
hovering near the edge
of a crimson horizon,
disappears, melting into
the lightening sky.


Dew, blanketing the hilltops
with cold, sweet drops,
is reflecting the light
and glowing like tiny,
sparkling red orbs.


A robin, joining the stream
in a whimsical melody,
breaks the stillness
of the pristine twilight,


and a ray of sunlight,
dropping through the 
curtain of rising mist,
lets the whole world know
that it is dawn.