An Icy Path
Snow shimmers in sudden sunlight
like a dream, as if wakened from dense fog.
Listen, snow sifts and swishes from fir trees,
kinglets flit and varied thrush scramble
Snow statues formed without chisel, rasp or mallet,
the sitting Buddha cloaked in a white wreath
its head muffled in eider down. Rhododendrons
folded like kneeling monks, salutations in the garden.
Who cries for the birds, the hungry mouths,
remote love like an icy pathway?
I skid in many directions, my vow
a tenuous thread, a found link in life’s fetter.
***
Christine Smart: storyteller, gardener, public health nurse and mother. Decked and Dancing published by Hedgerow Press. New book of poems, Ghost Railway and a novel The Painted Smile in progress.
LCP National Poetry Month Blog 2011 