Apprentice in Winter
The river sheets with ice,
metallic and silver; tints
like the taut skins of plums
through the frozen patches.
A landscaping of trees
and river willows in their framework shapes
hold the soft-white orb of the sun,
the pale misting above water
turning sky milk-blue.
Where fog blotted vision
and dampness held in cold,
now faint light diffuses
and spreads smoothly downstream -
turning everything fragile
then whole, as if only a cold season
is explicit enough
to move our attention
from travel
to the recurrent force
of visible breath,
the tensile clarity
underneath the abundant seasons.
