A Cloak for a Man Who Has No Heed for Winter

How often does it happen
to see fair men walk into a place where the snow has settled
with flowers fresh in their cheeks and their arms sprouting
sown thick with golden-rod and buttercup their flesh
and their eyes phlox-blue, how often do you set eye on them
dancing an avalanche with their skiis off, bringing
a bouquet of hair on the chest to lay in homage
on the remains of trees that pined away that winter?

nor is it a light burden they carry to the high places:
a great thirst, a wild hunger, and the iron of anger molten enough within
to brand the hide of a glacier
a feast of hot-hearted flowers that do not bloom
elsewhere but in their climate.

thou hast a thaw for winter sure as sun:
and two blue beams of eyesight lashed to one
to jam the breaking waters towards the spring .
thou hast a burning hand that will not take
gauntlet nor muff but, bare, defies the cold
and smites the flanks of drifts that, flake by flake ,
spume off their crust and running streams unfold .

There was no way of knowing if it were noon in this place
unless such men, traveling fast, came into the clearing
and stood their skiis upright, like the staffs of a shepherd in the snow.
The wind changed for the better, as a woman's mind may alter,
the thaw carved the abysses out with thunder
the great trunks of the snow splintered off
struck by the color and ease of their arrival
felled as so much kindling on the flame.

But frozen waters may sometime clap thy mouth
Arrows of ice be slung into the quiver.
Eyes drained bleak as marble of the south
will rattle like white dice in the river.
If cold strike thee bitter, stave it off
with the coarse complexion of this cloth.
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