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Cold's Verdict

Text of Poem

Anger wraps me in a mantle of yellow
leaves dropped from the old maple
wedged in a corner of the yard, I live
with the earth mostly as I go about
my chores, turning off water in
pasture tanks, draining hoses and pipes,
I nailed new hinges on a sagging barn door.
My neighbor washes storm windows, the
ladder he borrowed propped against the
porch, I grease the plow’s moldboard,
cut dead grass from the rake’s axle,
fasten a board on the corncrib and
pick up the spilled grain. But I know
the sky shows an empty blue face and
warm deceptive air stirs sleeping buds,
a pin oak flames in the sun to light the
world to some unknown exultation. All this
color and warmth to mask cold’s verdict
mocks me and I throw it back in the day’s face—
I who saw you wrestle with pain till death,
your courage tested like a twisted pine
on a cliff battered by the sea’s wind.

First Line
Anger wraps me in a mantle of yellow
Original Pub Location
Original Publication Date
1967
Original Citation
A Single Focus. Iowa City: Prairie Press. 1967. 50.
Complete Poems
170
Hearst Collections
Word Count
165
Poetic Form
open
Themes
Twitter Quote
I live / with the earth mostly as I go about / my chores,