The frozen silence seems to sing
in this bowl of white that sweeps
up and out toward sky. Not the wind
scouring down from snow, carrying
the northern light, scent of ice.
The ice itself is a music faintly glinting.
Trees, those lone sentinels, exclaim
along the ridge the song of wood
circling itself around a still heart
drinking deep from earth. And the river.
Moving its ever changing self
over rocks, flickering under frozen
eddies like a flame.  Like the fire
popping in the grate, last summer’s
rain in the cut grain of pine.