The shade of the Winter Sky is moonstone
The first snowfall cascades
Sight is softened, sound subdued
Streetlights beacon like silver lodestars
We venture into the night
Snow conceals the hidden ice
On curving pathways, unseen,
You rush heedless into the heart of open field
A sheath of snow veils
The furrows of corn stubble beneath the white mantel
You shape, pack snowballs, between your hands
Pitch a volley into the tangled brambles
Soft powder unloosed from the boughs
Reverently, I stay on the path
Unwilling to tread on unblemished spaces
Pure, cleansed, inviolate
A season later, a winter’s night,
I gaze through a window, frost encrusted,
Waiting for the first snow to descend
Though you are gone from me now
I still refer to you in present tense
Imagine: you are traveling
Some distant, foreign land
Finding yourself at a mountain ashram retreat
Soon, you will return enlightened
A shrine of photographs arranged
Carefully on a set of sturdy shelves
A memorial preserving youth
Will dreams inform me?
Finish all that was unsaid
Should I be seeking a sign?
Ice-locked branches rattle in the wind
A tremolo like the ringing of a Sanctus Bell
Boughs of fir, snow-heavy, genuflect
In sacred procession, I reverently trek
Into the heart of an open field
The corn stubble buried below
The urn of ashes, I scatter
Mixing and mingling into the falling flakes of snow