Winterbourne

 

Winterbourne

 by Catherine Chandler

December at this latitude is stark,

the woods a snarl of black and brown and gray.

By five o’clock the west’s already dark.

On the sandpit pond, now set along its edges,

straggling greylags land then hie away

while redpolls huddle deeper in the hedges.

Whitetail forage in the field and browse

on brittle forbs untouched by moldboard plows.

Then every year, around this time, a stream

loosens from the underlime of summer’s

stranglehold. And when the morning steam

dissipates above the flinty bed

like idle gossip or unfounded rumors,

a song arising from its fountainhead

trips over still, impenetrable stones

into my house, my heart, my blood, my bones.

It babbles things which in July lie laden

with sunny dispositions; things that cry

out from lengthened shadows; things forbidden;

of many-splendored things; of things that wilt,

weep, bleed and ultimately die.

And though the rivulet retreats to silt

come spring, it sings me all I need to know,

flanked though I be by behemoths of snow.