Snowscape with Figures

No winter-sharpened stars hang in the sky. This is a night of snowfall and the black Thick darkness crowding branches of the trees. No sound awakes the silence but the crack Of hemlocks where the snow piles white and deep, And soon their music through the ice-thin air Drifts into quiet of the frozen shadows Until another branch breaks suddenly clear.

But there are stars deep in the forest’s reaches Where small and furry and half-frightened things Search through the crystal night for sustenance, And stars shine in the branches where trembling wings Quiet as snowfall fold into the dark. Through all the woods, down every path I go, The eyes of hunger kindle in the night Small, secret stars beneath the falling snow.