Whistle calls wailing under slate skies so stoic and free

as long fingered branches gather and peer at their grace

a crowd of them just like schoolgirls giggling with glee

tinkling music from a mill stream with a silence replaced

twists in snowy chunks of watery relics uncovered here

pondering if my fingers can be flash frozen with frostbite

from the lack of your own hand’s warmth felt oh so near

but such radiance in winter sunsets to soothe the contrite

drifts split and hiding within their white frozen faces

the red of my heart left upon the river’s deep banks

but then my foot follows yours in the step it retraces

to that mill house we met at after going such lengths

without even looking for more Nor’easters approaching

I’d still trundle these bundles on the very same paths

for the glow in the window though far off is encroaching

upon the dark that despair knows will never quite last

loved there and then with the words of Barrett-Browning

when electricity ran off upon the wind’s blustery flight

so much beneath blankets we shared during the crowning

of winter’s pale peace beneath the great northern light