When winter’s icy grip is on the earth
And sparkling stars of multi-colored gems
Laugh up from snowy drifts with eyes of mirth;
When each prosaic sidewalk with its hems
Of heaped-up architecture shows a gay effect
Hard to achieve except by accident;
When every howling wind’s a fiend unchecked,
So merciless his rage, so violent;
Then, let me watch the swiftly setting sun
That forms the stumbling shadows of outspread
And moaning trees, which are a garrison–
A starving one, its hands above its head.
That futile sun, for all it lacks in might,
Is summer’s torch, and August’s signal-light.
by Ray Romine Sunday, February 13, 1944
