Tanita at [fiction, instead of lies] hosts Poetry Friday today.
View from the big barn It snowed all day today, a fine and soft snow. Bit by bit, the paw prints and hoof marks filled back in and the pasture began to look pristine again. The past week’s treks up and down to the pole barn and round and about the big barn slowly vanished, as though the week’s labors had somehow been magically erased away. In the few hours of weak daylight, even the bare trees have have a stark beauty. The landscape, empty of color, cleanses my soul.
At the Beginning of Winter by Tom Hennen
In the shallows of the river After one o’clock in the afternoon Ice still An eighth of an inch thick. Night never disappears completely But moves among the shadows On the bank Like a glimpse of fur. Meanwhile Trees Grass Flies and spiderwebs Appear alone in the flat air. The naked aspens stand like children Waiting to be baptized And the goldenrod too is stripped down To its bare stalk In the cold Even my thoughts
Have lost their foliage.