After the First November Snow

After the First November Snow

A garden inside me, unknown, secret,

neglected for years

the layers of its soil deep and thick.

Trees in the corners with branching arms

and the tangled briars like broken nets.

                                      David Whyte

                                      Easter Morning in Wales

We didn’t know we simply didn’t know

or me maybe just me frenzied as I am and can be by the brief
yet sudden onset of the cold or not sudden its been

arriving all along even though I’ve turned my back

not unlike those brides who were

warned and warned and they played

around instead they laughed and kissed each

other and took the sun into their mouths

and swallowed like Titus they rose to the cliffs shelves and left

themselves exposed so their toes and fingers go first

but they don’t know they don’t drunk on the sun

as they are and only later, at the closed

gates will they naked and exposed

know, sober, their certain sun has set

it’s glowing has glowed and glowed and burned itself 
out and they’ve been thrown like stones but oh I didn’t want to go

to this particular gate I wanted to open

the way for the gray and bare apple orchards 
the maple groves to take me in please, take me 
naked in for the winter and show me

how they, ancient crones, skirtless shirtless, after having

born and borne all their fruit, dropping it hope-

lessly to hands and mouths and beaks and grass, survive the cold.