Winter Brook

Winter Brook

An archangel is busy, lives underground
and builds tunnels for the ancient water,
coaxes melted snow down to the mouths of ponds
through funnels underneath these holy acres,

angles that sag down from the white pine
stand. Near the barn grey land rests flat.
There, the beckoned arteries burst from muddy skin
which is weak from runoff, wears rotting thatch,

thatch that bleeds itself into the thicket
of leveled veined grasses and old puffed cat-tails.
Winter Brook is carving it's name in the granite
gravel, its season shown-off in waterfalls,

arching down, down, to the culvert, to the pond,
and the hiding springs where the angel's work never ends.


Linda Hogan