It is cold today - a bare few degrees above zero - there is a hanging mist like gauze over the still scene: nothing moves branches are dripping black, wet, lichen blooms like green smoke thickening the God of Winter sends his vanguard before him, small soldiers running over the ground, test the terrain: his faint front advancing, giving us fair warning behind, he sits on his white warhorse, his golden crown, his ermine ... he waitsnext poem