Poetry
Stillness Before Snow
THERE is an eager and expectant air About the woods and fields this afternoon. They wait to bear, on furrow and flung branch, The burden of the snow that must fall soon.
There is no wind, no frolic of dead leaves ; No straggling briars shame the hedges trim. The old man's beard has shed its last curled locks, And all the trees are bare and smooth of limb.
What sound will break this silence ? The first flurry Has neither voice of wind nor song of rain,
An unperceived and shadowless descending
Of flakes that drift like thoughts through an idle brain.
A sudden step and the snap of a twig on the path Would lift the spell that holds all motionless,
And bring from the sky, with a flutter of white wings, The glancing blow of a soft and cold caress.
Nothing stirs but a bird, precariously swinging, That now on the branch alighted, whistles low, And rises to one clear note, so sharp and silvered,
That it pierces the cloud like a lance, and releases the snow.
PHYLLIS HARTNOT.T..
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