The trees, hoary and skeleton like
Sorrowful, reaching
Soulful and green less
Awaiting a glimpse of life
How do you breathe without
Your leaves? I can almost see
You gasp and spasm within
Your brittle, gray bark
Resembling the aged
An outline just able
To hold the veins, it’s own
Life force through the driving rain
Do you feel the biting wind,
The stinging sleet? You must know
That your life’s fluid is congealed
And thick, practically still
It’s so cold the moisture arises
From the streets and descends from the sky
Like shadowy figures
Rising and falling to greet the trees
Do you curse the water, that liquid
Of life, now solid and deadly?
I see it punishes and
Erodes, where once it flowed
The nearly dead branches
Still reach for the sky, and
Ask the question; is it my time to die?
Will I survive another frost?
Do you welcome this
cryogenic rest? I wonder
At what holds you upright
In mute defiance
With veins and hardly a frame
The sun peeks through
Melting the snow, giving life again
A green leaf has emerged
Tell me how you do it. How
Do I survive my own
Winter, greet the spring
with new growth? How?
Janet Caldwell & Alan Phillips
©2002 Caldwell Phillips