ladynyoblog

Winter turns the trees

Into black beggars on parade

Monstrous limbs twisted

With a pathos tearing

At the heart, instilling

A primordial fear,

A nightmare come to life

Mostly sullen- still

But whipped to a crazed

Frenzy when frigid winds

Blow out of the north

Limbs churning like

Giant whirligigs

A threshing of a

Dangerous grain.

Ah, these sentinels

Of a colorless landscape,

Scraped of fertility

Cold-crippled limbs

Upheld in supplication

To a Heaven of little mercy.

The sound of Pan’s pipes

In the fields

Blowing through wheat chaff

Creates a mythical  unease.

At night the trees

Dissolve the boundaries

Of what is known,

Or perhaps it is the night

That does,

Trees hemming

The landscape

Corralling our sight

 Yet come morning

We are brought

To a familiar and saner ground.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2021