A Pitcher Of Summer

One morning, before the leaves began changing

I caught a piece of summer and poured it into a pitcher;

This I placed in the cellar on a shelf collecting dust .

Autumn, then winter, rose up from the sea, and my

Garden was a garden filled with unbroken snow.

No flower strained its face to the ice giants' whisper,

No life coloured the vision of a newborn Spring babe.

My cellar-water dripping into a pail

And I lifted my piece of summer

Like a piece of memory or a dream

Like these, caught on film

And carried it to the garden floes,

The wind turning drifting stars to madness.

Poured forth gracefully, this ctheric tincture

Lifts winter's coat-of-arms with coaxing aromas and electricity.

Used with vigilance, a Pitcher of Summer stirs a memory into swooning,

And bravely, the flowers of the past will stretch their limbs into the sky

While snow falls quietly all around.