Winter Poem

Wintering

Carol Schiess

We’ve seen

the last hurried plunge of leaves,

swept off by an impatient wind,

leaves whose ambers, rust reds,

fuchsia pinks have heightened

the sky's bold blue

and held sunlight in the trees.

Color dies

with the passing of the leaves

and nature pushes time

into colder, briefer days.

Trees look older now,

stripped, shamed,

something pitiful revealed

in the collective reaching skyward

of frail limbs.

In winter,

a fearful presence

inhabits the lowering clouds,

waits beneath a hardened earth.

We, in that season,

are left without comfort,

knowing, as we do, that

death can come

before spring.