Snow Drops

 Like a lyric licks

The barley splits

The corn in fits and starts

Skits and parts chaff on the wind

Winnowing billowing gusts

And blasts that fast the breaking 

lines and rows and straps tied down

Over bales

And needles caught in Haystacks

Softly fall the snows on maps

Of our hearts and backs

And elbows tummies where

Tumble weed blows

And youth is but a refraction through

The glass of a crystal

Shatters snow flake

That breaks

But is still whole

In and of itself 

Contains itself

Again and again

Like a hologram

from the past

We ourselves change like snowflakes

Melting after a thaw

Our identity a fluid concept

That runs in and out of open doors

We are water based life forms

Beings of the vapours

And as the shore moves the pebbles

Through the tide

So we move heaven and earth

We tried

But temperatures froze us

impassable blockages dammed us in

And we could not flow

And still we waited cold and deep

Until across our surface

The ice did creep

And skaters came to play and score us with 

The lines of age

But nothing lasts that doesn't change

Upon time's stage

And in spring we thawed and our frozen expansion

Had cracked the walls of the pond

Until once again we spilled out

down new rivers and streams

And rills, rivulets culverts

and dives

And dipped into the caves

Where the bat thrives

And stalagmites and stalactites

Give us standing ovations and built statues 

Of our mineral foundations

And we deposit the past's baggage in river beds

And silt lakes

and we flow on more clearly forgetting

Not regretting our mistakes

Clear minded to the sea

Of all calm consolation

To join the mass hoards of starlit conversation

With sea birds and crustaceans

And bubbles where we glitter

And sparkle in deviations from

The winter bitter

And warm in gulf streams

And volcanic underground conurbations

A jet of steam is found 

To pass us through evaporation

Into the endless swirling ether of our imaginations

Where we write our names upon clouds

With all illuminations

Until the sun's head like lion proud

Roars in love and indignation

That he cannot see the crowds

Who to him offer their libations

And we scatter down

In snow flake crystallizations

Of the word for first softly fell then loud

But all in syncopation

On the hillside forest where the snow drops

Are praying

To welcome in the new spring

In pure white jubilation