Adelaide B. Shaw

My Winter Muse

You flit in and out, teasing me with promises, freezing up or vaporizing like mist all too quickly. I search for you in the woodlands. The trees naked and dark under a slate colored sky. Branches and limbs tossed and tangled on the woodland floor. Last year's leaves sticking to patches of old snow.

Horses in a muddy field wearing blankets, one a bright blue and gold plaid, glowing in the cold winter sunlight. Beyond that field, another. Dairy cows, their black and white hides splattered with mud. Uncaring, except for munching bales of hay spread on a raised platform.

A January thaw. Rain and more cold. The singing stream chokes up at an ice dam where a tree has fallen.

sleepless hours
listening for words
in the wind