JACK FROST HIEROGLYPHICS
by the late Verna Lee Hinegardner
(from
I Own One Star, 2005)
This morning every window in my house
was twinkling like a sky-borne melody
crisscrossing words that stir a memory
and I recall how icy panes around
the child in me. My fingernail snow-plows
initials in cold frost; and instantly
I need my Mommy's arms to comfort me
with tales of Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse.
I'm older now but still love Jack Frost Art
and search for hieroglyphics each cold day.
Folks claim that I'm naïve; can't understand.
My own grandkids think maybe it's the start
of Alzheimer's. Someday, like I, they'll say,
"My Lord can etch glass windows, hearts and sand."
~ ~ ~
SPLINTER
by Carl Sandburg
(from
Arrow Book of Poetry, 1965)
The voice of the last cricket
across the first frost
is one kind of good-by.
It is so thin a splinter of singing.
~ ~ ~
III THE HUNTERS IN THE SNOW
by William Carlos Williams
(from a longer poem, "Pictures from Brueghel"
in
Selected Poems, 1969)
The over-all picture is winter
icy mountains
in the background the return
from the hunt it is toward evening
from the left
sturdy hunters lead in
their pack the inn-sign
hanging from a
broken hinge is a stag a crucifix
between his antlers the cold
in yard is
deserted but for a huge bonfire
that flares wind-driven tended by
women who cluster
about it to the right beyond
the hill is a pattern of skaters
Brueghel the painter
concerned with it all has chosen
a winter-struck bush for his
foreground to
complete the picture . .
~ ~ ~
