Winter Meadow

I’m not fresh/You could lay me flat like winter grass/Trampled underfoot in the field out back/Crisp, hard air/Catching in your throat and stinging your ears/Way up high, glittering speck of a bird in flight

All becomes a husk:/Coarse fiber pulled and tucked/Warms the burrowed nest/A rabbit folds herself for rest

We await the crocus and the smell of thawing soil/The secret stir of roots stretching slowly under cool, dark cover/“One cannot not become simple and true in one day.”/Gold in every season

-Lowland Hum, “Winter Grass”