Classic Poem

Some of the drifts are white lilacs
strewn on the ground where branches
broke under weight of the snow. For,
now that there are flowers and leaves
to hold it, the untimely stuff
comes in tons and kilos, with even the maples
marytrs to their own vigor, foot-thick
leaders in heaps where they crashed. Thus

there's good reason, then,
why the leaves wither and blow
off before snow flies . . . . Even
so, thay may come back too early.
Nothing, it seems, though every cell's
known for a billion years what it has to know,
is certain of anything, and the turning world
tumbles us nightly on a slow wheel
in a glittering casino.











By permission of the author.