Written by the corridor's very own Brenda Butka!
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| A calm winter day in the Corridor. |
Sly white blossoming in the night,
scentless, without bees, matching
moon for moon and stars for light.
I climb the icy ridgetop path,
daft in the perfume of no perfume,
another brand of air, another kind of breath
than advertised, a truculent preamble
to promises of spring. The frozen creek
is silent, cannot sing and cannot speak.
Overnight, this orchard drops its melting bloom
to fruit unseen and underneath, where deep
below in hibernating rooms,
roots, opening like windowblinds,
are looking where to grow,
engines powered up with snow.
Every brittle leather leaf facing north and east
cups a tablespoon of snow,
the last cold blossoms left to go.
That mute creek begins to speak,
crawling under ice. In the barred and fallow dusk
trees, unburdened, creak.
Snow too is a season, a deadtime harvest dropped
just when turning earth had stopped--
an almanac for memory, like a poem.
