January Thaw

The sagging batts of snow

Wet-blanketing sheds and pines pock and decay

In fog's impalpable blandishments; and though

The slovenly papers piled on my desk will stay

Till put or thrown away,

They shroud the world with words

As forms of water dally

With one another, driveling factitious surds,

Beguiling abortive lilac buds to rally

Merely as part of the prevalent shilly-shally.

To correspond with you could be mistaken

Now for the stuff of dreams;

Yet, through your invocation, I would waken

Here at its tepid start the year's extremes

And cast what only seems

In hopes that madid fluff

And flux make firm free sway for changes rung

To ring true here and now, or true enough

For reference among

Invalid symptoms like my coated tongue.

Poetic moonshine. Last night, a white nun

Moved in my snowblind stare

(Shadows themselves obscured, being overrun

With lucency) so fair

That when she lay still, crinkled, her ash-blond hair

Blurring the wimple, my fear came and found

Nothing to know, till a dark, active man

Who speared for silverfish that shot the ground

Under the snow, began

To run, and I too ran.

So I beseech your prayer,

My dear. Let us believe: our time deposes

Despite its own nay-sayer

No reign excepting doubt, but still encloses

The brisk November sleet and slow primroses,

All of the gifts the times you came here lavished;

And as your songs then rimed

My ear is ever ravished

Tolling their ravishment, time timed untimed.

Thus the pure Host atones for being slimed.