Walking the Dogs in Winter – Marge Leard

Walking the Dogs in Winter

Marge Leard

By Marge Leard

Adeep in tangled mem’ries of dreams gone bad,
What senses morning in this Winter’s cold?
No Summer brightness,
No yellow globe of piercing light,
No azure sky to greet my day.
Yet blooming in the eastern sky, a stealthy pink assails my lids.,
And I awake.
Not yet six o’clock and pinkness whispers,
“Look! See my beauty as I journey upward to your new day.”
It is quiet, this awakening,
Soft and stealthy as a kiss.
Pinkness spreads,
Acquires a golden streak,
Tinges cloud and sky alike.
In silence still, I dress,
Put on the many layers for a Winter’s morn.
The dogs are dancing at my feet.
They need no coats, no hats, no gloves, no light of dawn.
They frolic in joy of the graying morn,
In Winter’s cold and snow and dark.
At almost six, peace reigns on our private road
‘Tween woods and field and restless bay.
A brief sweet signal.
The chirruping song of cardinal,
The raucous call of crows,
A coyote trotting home from a night’s adventure.
Or perhaps a fox?
Its gray shadow, so like a dog’s, mystifies my urban mind.
But it has a bushy tail.
My dogs are curious, ears and nose alert, bodies still.
They seem to know to leave it be.
Their wild kin passes into bush on the side of the road
Only scent and shaking leaves behind, its memory.
And then the world erupts in loud complaint.
Canada geese, wave on wave ,vee their way
To a morning breakfast on the bay.
One hundred, two hundred, more.
Their hoarse cries volley in mad’ning distress
Against the indignant squeals of the gulls already there.
In the distance, a sound like thunder.
The early planes are leaving Green.
It is 6:10
Morning has come

Posted in Poet Laureate.