SPRING GLOOM

the winter strides out into spring, the birds

sing in their throats with sudden vigour

chasing notes of winds and frosty cracks

across the lake to slake the thirst of 

roe deer, moose, and rats.

There creep out animals from under doors,

the forest floors and matted hats of grass

now prostrate, flattened down,

their crown-jewels glowed in winters grip

but now they come alive and start to drip.

The burns begin to charge beneath their icy layers

and tow at leaves as wayside saplings wave about,

the buzzards scream and sigh on high, and sail at ease

while buds spring out high up among the branches 

of the trees, and all awakens from a frozen dream

not gone, yet long, the blizzards have so tempered

all, with squalls and heavy wet white snow,

now soon to bloom as rainbows flash the gloom

and weave a poem in springs bright new loom.

And yet my own, its rhythms slowing down

have lost their crown and drown in tears of 

sorrows, as those bright promised tomorrows loom,

and send my spirit soon to other worlds

where I can sit and study stones and bones,

those things that lie there when the winter's gone,

and strain my ear to hear when deafened, dumb,

I am without the other one, that youth in memory,

despite my years, is vivid still, 

as I sit here beside my window sill.