Winter's End
23.12.1982/01.04.2010
(c) 2010 by Heidrun Beer
I do not know how long it is that I
wander with my burden, through silence
miles wide deeply buried under snow,
while I am warming with my little breath
a whole season that's determined to insist
on coldness.
these too are prayers: marvel
at the livingness which while so near to death
is covered brilliantly with frozen beauty;
at the ice enclosing a forgotten aster blossom
in whom towards the valley's sleeping thirst
a lukewarm rain is waiting. and how no winter
subordinates all warmth:
there through the piled up snow
hastens the creek, as gladly as in summer.
he writes a message into the landscape -
for all the ice and snow up on his banks
he drinks into himself during his journey
into the sea, he lives on them, he grows
and swells and says all over, now and now
and now again:
behold! it thaws! it thaws!