Ice This Morning

Ice this early morning on the puddles and windshields

and a thin layer forming on the lake, in the shallows,

as winter begins his move, driving out fall completely,

stripped now of her colors, reds and orange,

yellows and browns gone to bare limbs reaching out,

imploring, her nakedness laid open, revealed and revealing;

the nights, too, are colder, and a heavy frost settles in,

hoarfrost, coating the world in translucency, changing

what was into something new and different, changed,

and a mist rises from the lake, a fog, blurring

the distant shore below a darker sky, this early morning,

a radiance, a deeper clarity flooded with a moonlit brilliance,

a darkness punctuated by stars, grouped, constellatory,

approving and unmoved, the nature of things unchanging;

and the air burns my nose and cheeks, a biting cold,

carrying with it the rhythmic scrape of ice removed,

scraped away, a reason to be here, in early morning's darkness,

my neighbors and I, an excuse, perhaps,

a few minutes alone, solitary, deliberate, wistful,

touched by winter’s arrival, nature’s cycles changing,

a giving way, changing us, changed ourselves, this cold morning,

readied, awaiting the snows ahead and the days to come.