Bright Harvest by Grace Noll Crowell - HTML preview

Winter in the Woods

O

UT IN the clean cold whiteness

Of a snow-clad winter wood,

One sees and feels and hears there

Things beautiful and good:

The brittle forked bough snapping,

The ring of an axe on oak,

An old wood wagon creaking

In each protesting spoke,

A crow’s wide wheel—his cawing

Sharp when the air is still,

That echoes and re-echoes

From distant hill to hill;

The hint of a far spring freshet,

And close by a twisted root

A clump of moss appearing,

And a jack-in-the-pulpit shoot,

Sharp as a pen point writing

Spring in a lettered word . . .

Oh, the things in the woods of winter

That I have seen and heard!

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