Juliana Gray "Winter comes to rule the varied year" Gone, the ripe tomato. Gone, the tang,
almost of wine, at its greeny stem. Gone,
the hillside shagged with goldenrod and asters.
Gone, the fat groundhog humping through
a field of cornflowers, blue splendor
of weeds. Gone, the slopes of larch and maple
scattering down their gold and copper flakes,
their flecks of rust, across the sinking valley.Now the hard time. Now the snow.
Now the black sticks, these thin shadows
of the ghosts they try to conjure back.
Title drawn from "Winter: A Poem" by James Thomson