Winter’s Mate

For Jeff

On the May your gold-brown plumage flashed    
We nibbled the sweet green fuse.      
      
Blossoms clung across late summer      
We played  sticky sweet      
Mapping limbs with trickling juices, rising sap.      
     
Swelling aching, blood-brown full  
A harvest moon climbed       
Over the orchard loosing her ready fruit    
Geese winged purposed, urgent      
Crying warning crossing       
Twinning arrows loosed, swift and gone.    
       
May we embrace in deep winters    
Layering tight, holding year by year      
Like pinecones laid in gentle wait        
On lofty needle bed.      
   
In the moonlit forest snow drops      
Falling fast as stones,    
Crystal silent cold and deep.      
Was summer ever? What is sun?      
Stars wheel obedient to the great Father clock,      
All fold in, say Grace and batten down.      
       
Now we tumble curled in linking lifeblood dream      
Two foxes denning tail to circled tail    
Eyelids flit, teeth aready, paws twitch,  
Limbs tighten, stretch in imagined leap.      
   
Let us harbor, mate    
Sharing our well-laid store of heat      
And I will chase you on the meadow come Spring.