How quickly the garden was painted

How quickly this year, the garden was painted with snow

the brown earth hidden, inch by inch,

its months of honest labor buried, its future put on hold.

Over by the fence, the limbs of the handsome pine tree

tremble already under the weight of the soggy flakes.

A couple of stars peer down with clinical gaze.

Paths as yet unswept. Few neighbors will venture out

until morning, I bet. Inside the venerable stone building converted decades ago

to apartments for those of a certain age,

clearly visible at ground level,

a companion-cat (younger more vigorous than the tenants)

huddles, comically like his owner, close to the baseboard heat.

But way up high, where the roof is peaked,

and the windows wear hats, an anxious face rimmed with scanty gray hair,

a fragile form, half-shadow, half-woman or man,

watches, dismayed, the insolent, fast developing storm,

and wonders if the poor little garden below,

that this newcomer has robber, will ever be able to grow back again.

Laura Scribner, Goshen Readers: Feeling stirred? Post your poetry at dirt-mag.com or email editor.dirt@strausnews.com. Well publish our favorite poem in the magazine.