In Time of Winter

                  "Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?" 

                                                                       The Book of Job

Beyond my rim of sherry small boys
infiltrate, the clatter of sleds, the clink
of skates from shoulders, the shouts, all wooled
and muffled by the new snow like sounds that wink
from the memory. All unwilled
once more the old dangers, the unearthly joys

arrive. My whole weight imbrutes to wish,
before I know it, that black arctic air
might never blow summer out again.
But I bridle the lunge this side of prayer
thinking of those few molten men
whose one right is blizzard, the full curse and lash.

Somewhere in the wine-warm room is when
I too craved nothing but that the lonely
cold might pounce stinging upon the quick,
when snow across the field was the only
light I had in the dark and thick.

                    —Ernest Sandeen  (1908-1997)