After many bitterly cold days

After many bitterly cold days

in mid-January I stood at the window,

and then, suddenly, I saw them again:

light bluish shadows on fresh-fallen snow,

shadows of young pine-trees, of children’s castles,

of a broken ski of a lost mitten,

and shadows of snow itself, myriads

of living and playing shadows, everything

suddenly alive, full of colour and meaning,

and of reminders that I should be

not here but somewhere else,

perhaps in my country home where shadows are more blue

and snow more white with tiny strips of stray birch bark,

trembling in gusts of wind which comes

from far away over open fields and barren groves,

and brings to my ears the faint sound of rolling crumbs of snow

and some distant calls of chickadees.

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