WINTER

WINTER II REVISED 9/14/2010. -- Nancy James


Winter so calm a word,
Spring, Autumn, Winter.
The no'ester blows
along deeply blackened
emotional waves.


Traps pulled three a.m.
Lobsters at the end of their run.
Deer hunted, gutted, celler frozen,
For bitter, no frozen Maine winters.

Simple seasonal makeovers
bore the natives, pulling traps
Sloppy in muck, sand, trapped
In muddy high tides.
Clams,, oysters, hell to get.

Crabbing, whole belly, oily,
Fried thickly, and buckets,
raw crabs, clams, blueberries
picked over the wild hill.

Small, sweet, tiny spots on wild
bushes. A bucket, painstaking
plucking delicacies.

Winter, snow rooftop to rooftop,
butt crammed against heater
gas, pipes eminating in long
radiators blessing the longer
forecast of three sunless
winters, icicles, frozen rooftoops

Awakened as curtains sneak
views of absolutely nothing.,.
The horizon disappears.
Relentless snow;
What was once a stream
Is now vapor from ice.

Wolves lap patched streams,
Where a tide was long since
Stolen by the shifting of winds.
I huddle wearily,
Seeking hay to rest upon.

The birds scream
With my intrusion.
I am lost,
With this winter's change.