Winterwoods

by Carl Parsons

The doe and fawn have lost their hiding place.
Swept clean by wind and rain, the forest now
is bare and bears no fruit for famished mouths.
No trace of summer dalliance here remains
where bee and blossom kissed above the humid                 
garden ground.  The chance not seized now is lost.
Summer’s cost, the recompense for that warm
sweetness that we knew, now in full is due.

Now the roaring cold has come again;
we cluster about repentant fires and wrap
ourselves in shawls and shrouds while we
tell ourselves again the holy days.
We praise the orchard apples that we saved                       
and hang them in the snow-filled garden where
the doe and fawn may browse.  Yesterday
at nightfall we thought we saw them moving,
faint and brown, rousing the winterwoods.