On the Hill
On the hill, a mother
is desperate to nurse babies
who have gone still and silent,
with milk they'll never take
She knows they are not sleeping
but cannot bear to leave them,
so licks their tiny faces,
that they might come awake
She thinks if she can warm them,
then Winter will not want them
and Spring will find them happy
and hale, and furred, and free
As sorrow overwhelms her,
she curls herself around them,
soon dreaming in the way of
all creatures such as she
of fish in rippling water,
of game and earth. Of watching
her mate at play in powder,
unmindful of the chill
And when the Winter claims her,
she's running with her children,
grown tall among the flowers
that bloom upon the hill
|