Freeze Me! If You Can

Why feel sad on such a fair day? Yesterday's
deep cloud overcast obscuring the sun has
dissipated and the sky is wide and blue
gracefully illuminating the landscape below.
This morning the pair of cardinals that sing us
awake of spring mornings silently returned.
Their bright scarlet plumage glancing from tree
branch to fence, to leafless shrubs, a moving
feast for our summer-mourning eyes.

Bright, our otherwise-bleak garden, from the
rays of the late fall sun, closed for the season,
in a bell-like clarity. The honeysuckle vine,
almost leaf-denuded, defiantly sets its last pink
bloom. The bergenia refuse to permit their crisply
colourful leaves to shrivel. All the heucheras
with their variously pale chartreuse, pink,
green and gold scalloped leaves remain dedicated
to the preservation of form and freshness.

The hydrangea vine, even as the last of its
leaves crisply brown fall to enrich the soil, sets
its buds for spring awakening, and the corkscrew
hazel, no slouch, does the very same, dangling
fuzzy pods. The rose canes have been cut back
and capped with snow-white cones; headstones
in this garden cemetery. Bright red berries
dangle from the weeping crabapple, gaily
inviting migration-tardy birds' attention.

Sad Demeter, standing before our dining room
windows, eyes downcast, is deep in thought of
her daughter Persephone languishing the winter
months in the sere Underworld of Hades. And the
gargoyles on our porch impishly taunt the
coming winter season; freeze me! if you can....