The Cusp of Winter

A gentle snow drifts down through the trees in the woods beside my house,
As I sit beside the stream that runs on with the wash from
Freezing rain and the first snow fall
And watch the flakes be swallowed up by water not yet quieted
While trees, though not fully surrendered of their produce
to the creeping siege,
Are mostly still,
Remembered youth drifts back to me
When the cold could not stiffen my ankles or shudder my knees
leaping across the stream and following its course
And love was punctuated by melancholy,
born of the constant movement of life
and its sweeping mysteries,
And I can see through a parting in the wood,
Signaled by the chimney's rising smoke,
The house where there inside
My wife and children - my enduring loves,
Nurse the warmth of the sustainable fire.