Winter 1963
I saw the white bark of a birch
disappear in the night’s darkness,
and I knew soon I’d lose sight
of the path I had walked.
I saw a maple leaf the size
of a small man’s hand. It hung
over the ice-covered beaver’s pond,
and I felt that I had failed to understand
something as common as the wind.
I saw a blue spruce. It fell
crushing its branches beneath
its trunk, and the woods taught me
the old paradox that time
is short and eternal.
Joe Milosch’s new book of poetry is A Walk with Breast Cancer. His book Homeplate Was the Heart & Other Stories was nominated for the American Book Award and the Eric Hoffer, best Small Press Publication. His other books are The Lost Pilgrimage Poems & Landscape of a Woman and a Hummingbird.
