Students in Creative
    Non-Fiction, Writing
    about Nature,
    Landscape, and
    Environment
               Spring 2002 

Four clear nights --
the woodsmoke rising blue
against the quarter-moon black,
the house cracking in the below
zero plunge into dark -- 
say Winter holds.

The Earth, however, dumb and slow,
turns, leans into the light
and day lengthens.

The ground, caught in the altercation
of freeze and thaw, heaves,
and in the maples the run
of sweetness augurs the water
baptism, the scouring melt,
and the planted seed.
                                        Next page
                              John Leax            
                             from The Task of Adam