the last time we spoke
winter made notice of
white along the snowbound
hills of Vineyard Lake
where the trees, barren in
a frozen grip of silence,
bore the gold of September
as each leaf died when we
were still in love – my intuition,
frost made imminent as the
crisp and dying light of solstice,
knew our hearts would long for the day in
memory to purge this night’s moment –
and now, like the falling snow that
gathers in these hills with stillness,
our love departs each from the other
as a noon-day sun emerges
from these crying clouds

© K. James Ribble