Winter Blues

 

It begins just before sunset

Or before the sun appears

The transition of light and color

A kaleidoscope turning around the earth

 

 

As the sun leaves us for another place

a blue-gray comes over the December lake

Her crystal surface dressed in a rainbow of glitter

Catching the prism lens of sunset

 

The trees are dressed in oxford blue

The snow sparkles in Alice-blue

Shades of no-photo blue and

Midnight blue define the horizon of trees

Sky blue fades in blurred progression

Interrupted by an occasional cloud

 

The nearly transformed water

is a silver glazed cornflower blue

turning steel blue and moving

like a thick pudding or a sludge of oil

unable to decide whether

liquid or crystalline is its true nature

 

The morning has a different dance

Oxford blue shrouds the scene

As Persian blue begins the day

Rimmed by sweet butter cup yellow

Not the fiery passion of the sunset orange

But rather a solar yawn

Stretching, Stirring,

 

Not the dramatic evening departure behind

the curvature of the earth and water

The morning’s faint pinks and yellows

precede the definition of the midnight blue trees

 

Silver crusted snow turns celeste blue

but not for long.

Gray blends to powder blue

the trees now more and more defined

until they illuminate and reveal themselves

to be, each one, distinct among the forest

 

Almost instantly, a blink, a pause, and the snow appears

White, but defined as the spectrum divides

with more specifics

Now the multicultural earth reveals

Green hues, orange punctuations,

Glitter of gold, pinks and reds

Depth of brown, Definition of black

Now only remnants of blue

Sky blue

 

Silver white snow lays a blanket of cover

For all the critters and grasses to rest beneath

And the multiple shades of the trees in the woods

Stand sentry to live another day

 

Janet E. Hartwick Sterk