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It snowed in
spring on earth so dry and warm
The flakes could find
no landing place to form.
Hordes spent themselves to
make it wet and cold,
And still they failed of any
lasting hold.
They made no white impression on the
black.
They disappeared as if earth sent them back.
Not till from separate flakes they changed at night
To almost strips and tapes of ragged white
Did grass
and garden ground confess it snowed,
And all go back
to winter but the road.
Next day the scene was piled
and puffed and dead.
The grass lay flattened under
one great tread.
Borne down until the end almost took
root,
The rangey bough anticipated fruit
With
snowball cupped in every opening bud.
The road alone
maintained itself in mud,
Whatever its secret was of
greater heat
From inward fires or brush of passing
feet.
In spring more mortal singers than belong
To any one place cover us with song.
Thrush,
bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng;
Some
to go further north to Hudson's Bay,
Some that have
come too far north back away,
Really a very few to
build and stay.
Now was seen how these liked belated
snow.
the field had nowhere left for them to go;
They'd soon exhausted all there was in flying;
The
trees they'd had enough of with once trying
And
setting off their heavy powder load.
They could find
nothing open but the road.
Sot there they let their
lives be narrowed in
By thousands the bad weather
made akin.
The road became a channel running flocks
Of glossy birds like ripples over rocks.
I drove them
under foot in bits of flight
That kept the ground.
almost disputing right
Of way with me from apathy of
wing,
A talking twitter all they had to sing.
A
few I must have driven to despair
Made quick asides,
but having done in air
A whir among white branches
great and small
As in some too much carven marble
hall
Where one false wing beat would have brought
down all,
Came tamely back in front of me, the
Drover,
To suffer the same driven nightmare over.
One such storm in a lifetime couldn't teach them
That
back behind pursuit it couldn't reach them;
None flew
behind me to be left alone.
Well, something for a
snowstorm to have shown
The country's singing
strength thus brought together,
the thought repressed
and moody with the weather
Was none the less there
ready to be freed
And sing the wildflowers up from
root and seed.
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