Ode To Winter Poem by Suzanne Louise Bishop

You always had an overlooked approach,
Your ships armada of billowing cloud sails,
Into my crisp yellow nights, stealing colours,
So we wake to find the trees standing naked,
Like tall, goddess sentials warning of you,
And know not when they came to be that way,
People find you with reproach, so
You execute the elderly and force starlings to flee,
Then sit in a hedgerow on a spider’s web,
Where your tears gleam, like blue fire,
You greet the horizon famously, a sweeping takeover,
With none there to fight you, spread your pale silk
Under the mute sun and listen to the nil sound
Of your victory celebration. An overheard cough,
An overhead plane carrying the ones who left;
Who should have stayed to comprehend
Your stark symphony of crystal and grey.
I enjoy your complacent company, in truth,
I have many a time found myself sat with you
On a park bench, or walked with you down
A silvered city street. Where people tut and hurry
When you try to put their pink hands in yours,
Stood in awe of your decoration of the gutters;
The stiff stalactite bunting of your personal parade,
It had to be your way. Or nothing could be at all.
I was ever amused by your objective stance, your
Disapproving sigh at the how the snowflakes dance,
And when let to stay we were met by forgiveness,
The softening of your grasped fingers on spines,
Over time, your juvenile acceptance of how to be kind.
Mostly I admired your humble retreat, how you
Quietly drew back and made space for the bursting buds,
Let the shoots crack the earth at your frozen feet.
The treason of your army, the self-sacrificial defeat.