The blue sky crowds
with angry pregnant snow clouds.
Like wintery ghosts
they soar and cast
long somber shadows
across the peaks of the mountain.

The row of grey green aspen trunks outside my window
like tall soldiers with long arms
creak and sway in the spring bluster.
They point bony-fingered warnings
toward the menacing storm.

Fragile
hidden
aspen leaf hatchlings strain to unfurl
inside
furry
buds on branches.

Below,
black dirt entombs
seeds of vulnerable
unseen
gestation.

And the wet heavy snow approaches like a thumping ogre.

An inevitable
cold moves to
steal the warm.
Gravestone white will cover the green.

Wars will rage
in the landscape between
dormancy
and
waking.

Forces clash and battle
on the ground where new life might grow.

Even so,
deep in the buried sleep
and constant forgetting,

a heart knows.

At the end of a dark cold season,
the silent roar of resurrection
always overcomes.

Always.