Snow Shadows

Our valley just was springing back
From winter’s crippling despair,
A movie set in snowpack,
Breeding starlets in the air,

When a storm erased the dreams
Of skies with a vain encore
Of last month’s nefarious extremes,
The world returned to what it was before:

Flat and grey and destitute,
Forests frozen in the act
Of growing optimistic fruit,
Their field day frosted but intact,

Photographed in action, blindfold,
As the sky’s triumphant pursuits
Bit by bit took glossy hold
Of the ill-advised spring shoots.

But morning came, and wrung out
Night from one side of each tree,
Where the star-struck sun hung out,
Leaving in the meadow’s lee,

Like a girl’s sheltered nape,
Spared from aging by the shadow
Which sun itself had given shape,
A party picture of the snow.

Tippet Alley
April 5th, 2002

Rue de Varenne
April 14th, 2005