My Winter Gypsy

My memento mori is the snow.
Today and tomorrow and
yesterday.

The sky is falling - thick with a thousand
slither slight shards. It shatters.
Downwards it slips, caught in the picket
of trees whose indomitable fortress is now decorated
in soft white. The black of the sky is starless.
Cloud coated.

It is morning. A soft morning.
In soft colours the dusty dawn is daring to reveal
the winter wonders. It is as if the world below is a well
that keeps catching the falling sky.
As if Heaven is broken and now covers the earth
in a perfect
semblance of the idyll.

Like stars in the orange lamplight they lilt,
flutter and seem enflamed
but, instead, are eaten by the white ground and the black trees.
There is no signal, no distress
and as we step into the wintry wilderness
we marvel.

You see beauty in the infinite
feathers of frosty white.
Your flushed skin in the face of the wind
mirrors your wide smile with its easy warmth.
This is my idol, you, my love,
ever pinned to the alter of my memory.