Canadian Winter

SNOWSHOEING

No wind
but cold enough
to chill still cheeks
so we move off
over the snow
sky dense with stars
moon a quarter-light
trees limned
against the night.

No sound
but our snowshoes
creaking the snow
lifting puffs
with every
wide-legged stride.

No perspective
but before us
an undisturbed sheet
covers the
hidden country
where we orient
our winter landscape.

No trouble
breaking trail
before us
snow neat as a
new-laid counterpane
behind us a path
undulating
like some unknowable
nocturnal beast.


OUR SHADOWS MOVE LONG LEGS

Snowshoeing ravines
we wind carefully down
where streams rush headlong
in summer. Tree roots hang
icicled like hoary whiskers
like your beard with its exhaust
glistening back the sun.

Animal tracks lead a crisscross
a braillework of animal lore
and we stop briefly to study
speculate, wonder if they're
watching us awkwarding
their byways. The trees

stand like dolmens, stark
against the white plain;
among them great elms
sieved by woodpeckers
creaking murderously
in the wind. Ghosts of

summer whisper from beeches
and redpolls flicker
from branch to branch as
chickadees dart and tease
us with their silly name.

It's cold enough so
our snowshoes creak and
groan on the wind-tufted snow
yet we plod on
red-cheeked but comfortable
in our cocoon of energy.

Clouds string the horizon
as the setting sun
illuminates and warms
the trail we leave behind;
animating it like
a giant caterpillar.


WHITE HIKE

Muckluks harnessed
we hoof it over the snow
into a cedar swamp
its waters sleeping under
the winter blanket. The
sun, high and sharp
glimmers off the contours

of the swamp; here
and there a dip where
water still runs. Rose-
breasted grosbeaks
wing the still air

as we stalk tracks of
hare and grouse - one fox.
A sapsucker patterned
the trunk of a pine. My
toque is grasped - a trophy

on a hawthorne's greedy
arm. We stomp the snow
for hours up hills and down
treed sides to retrace
finally, beating dusk
by a winter's shade.

Rita Rosenfeld c. 1980

Published by Fiddlehead Poetry Books
Fiddlehead Poetry Book No. 293