Sky gray as grave wrappings,
day dawns with the sullens.
Sodden leaf mold mingles
with the scent of coming snow.
Silent crows are drenched and dismal,
staring into the storm’s eye.
Oak leaves, brown and wilted,
make a damp chatter, as if they gossip.
Even the dryad shivers,
lissome and fair but cold in there.
She turns a shoulder to the icy wind
and hoodwinks the honest earth
into seeing a magic eye appear
gathering the light, shedding no tear.
The luminous gaze falls on the smallest
child, hopeful of seeing the first
snowflake spiral like a fallen star.
No frown can stay down in
the presence of wonder and hope.

Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham
Note: A dryad is a nymph or goddess of a tree, often an oak. I make reference to a Sylvia Plath poem, On the Difficulty of Conjuring Up a Dryad, in which conjuring, Plath fails. Her “tree stays tree” no matter how she wrenches “obstinate bark and trunk/ To [her] sweet will”. Is she disappointed or triumphant when “no luminous shape/ Steps out radiant in limb, eye, lip,/ To hoodwink the honest earth which pointblank/ Spurns such fiction/ As nymphs”? She then observes that her cold vision “will have no counterfeit/ Palmed off on it.”  My imagination is of a different sort than hers today. Where my eye scans, I see magic. May you have a magical day.