Midwinter

By John Unterecker
At dusk, a great flare of winter lightning photographed the bay:
Waves were broken scrolls.          Beyond Donegal, white mountains
hung in a narrow bas-relief frozen on sky.
 
                                                                            Later, there was sleet: trees down
on the Drumholm road; near Timoney’s farm, a frantic goose
pinned under branches.
 
                                        All night long, we spoke of loneliness,
long winter, while winter sang in the chimneys.
 
Then the sky cleared and a marvel began: The hills turned blue;
in the valley a blue cottage sent up the day’s first plume of smoke.
It gathered like a dream drenched in frost.
 
That should have been all.                           We had worn out night.
 
But single-file,  deliberate,  five heifers,  a black bull,  three calves stepped  through the
                                                                                                                                    broken fence.
They arranged themselves between the house and hedge: a kind of diagram:
a shifting pattern grazing frozen weeds.
 
Their image is with me still.               The backs of the cattle are patchy with frost blue as
                                                                                                                                     morning.

Copyright Credit: John Unterecker, "Midwinter" from Stone, published by University of Hawai’i Press. Copyright © 1977 by John Unterecker.  Reprinted by permission of Estate of John Unterecker.
Source: Stone (University of Hawai'i Press, 1977)