The snow has come. The swirling flakes self-immolate

on hot maple grove, white-fringe the aging auburn oaks,

a coin drop from winter into the glacial lake.

(Cold comes so early here -- September frost invades

the harvesting and gives the roses heart attacks.)

The boreal wind has taken up residence,

has seized the calendar in icy clench. The hat

I haven't seen since spring comes down -- I undertake

a day-long search for hibernating gloves and boots.

My scarf has stolen off -- I know not where. The mouse,

the gray one my cat keeps catching and letting go,

darts to and fro on the kitchen floor -- does he know

the hard light's reckoning? Does bone-deep chill at dawn

embolden him this once for daylight foraging?

(We have an arrangement on the winter's supplies:

he comes out at night and he and I know full well

that whatever is not locked is not wanted, fair game

for a gray mouse.) He nudges a cast-off crust,

noses for crumbs, his whiskers italicizing

the advent of hunger, his tail a question mark

interrogating me about the wayward sun.

Alone in frost, I take my place at the lake,

my solitude complete, my steps the first to break

the pathway to the pebbled shore. I stand alone,

until the rabbit peers out from the graveyard grass --

twice now he's been there among the mummied lilies,

his eye, as mine, upon the never placid waves.

The summer boats are gone. White ducks that waded here

are huddled now beneath the bridge, far downstream.

The other birds have packed their bags -- they have left us

their broken shells, their desolated nests, their songs

a carbon copy of a twice-repeated tale.

Lord Lepus, what do you know of impending ice?

Do you suspect the cirrus-borne snow's arrival?

Will you find greens enough beneath the snow bank?

We turn our mutual ways -- you to your warren

amid the husks and roots and toppled gravestones --

I must go to book and breakfast. I leave the trees,

fond frame of my eye's delight, putting behind me

the cup of lake that always welcomes each sunrise.

Soon now its eye will be blinded, a cataract

reflecting sheet-white nothingness. I walk through town,

across the college grounds where last night's wind's caprice

made here a pristine bed of snow -- yet over there

an untouched riot of maple on still green lawn.

The carillon tolls the beginning of the day;

the students hurry, dumbfounded at virgin snow.

I am the only one to linger here. I stand

upon a carpet of red, soft, ancient leaves: some,

some are green yet, they are still proud,

they are fallen on the wings of their youth

and they are going to pick up anytime now

and fly back --

I am mourning for them,

for them, for you, for my brothers who have

fallen.

--October 31, 1968, Edinboro, Pennsylvania, revised 1995, 1996