One morning, before the leaves began changing
I caught a piece of summer
and poured it into a pitcher;
This I placed in the cellar on a
shelf collecting dust .
Autumn, then winter, rose up from the sea, and
my
Garden was a garden filled with unbroken snow.
No flower
strained its face to the ice giants' whisper,
No life coloured the vision
of a newborn Spring babe.
My cellar-water dripping into a pail
And I lifted my piece of summer
Like a piece of memory or a dream
Like these, caught on film
And carried it to the garden
floes,
The wind turning drifting stars to madness.
Poured
forth gracefully, this ctheric tincture
Lifts winter's coat-of-arms with
coaxing aromas and electricity.
Used with vigilance, a Pitcher of Summer
stirs a memory into swooning,
And bravely, the flowers of the past will
stretch their limbs into the sky
While snow falls quietly all around.