Cold's Verdict

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.