Arras

A field of snow
growing
in the silence.

Sun softening
the gentle swells
illuminating
crystals.

Wind bends
a long straw
and winds it slowly
ornamenting the
pristine blanket,

with an oval
repeated
and repeated.

A mouse shelters
in a snowhole
nibbling windfallen seeds;
leaving droppings
in the frozen nest.

Hare tracks
cluster under
shelter of a
snow-laden pine.

There - the
outspread wings
of a falcon
imprinted on the snow

- and there the
hare tracks end.
There is no blood
to colour the
monomorphic plane.

Early Harvest, 1980