The meadow is a monochrome of confection,
every rooted thing around you recognizable
beneath the sugary coat of snow.
You could say even the dead of winter
have their proper fancy names here:
Veronia, Solidago, Ranunculus
with their showy panicles, capitulums,
racemes and cymes. You could simplify,
say: Ironweed, Goldenrod, Creeping Buttercup
are asleep inside all this decorative white.
That the lobbing blossoms of last
spring’s explosion are now icy spikes,
wands, shivering pods, stalks and fronds.
Cold clusters of faded color we sighed over
at the end of last summer. Or . . .
you could just be someone with a dog
standing still in the middle of the frost
and simply say nothing at all.
