DAWN WIND

The day comes with a dawn wind

brisk enough to ripple the broad

waters circling back beneath the

waterfall, where the sheet of ice

at the edge of those circling waters,

the chunks of ice in its stately,

regular motion, were all the day

would offer of the motion of the

river below. And the falls appeared

as a floating temple, with columns

of ice at either edge, and a glimpse

of huge, sparking boulders at its base,

through a mist that, on occasion,

would rise slightly, or be blown off.

The wind came with surprising warmth,

and a dampness that carries the promise

of rain, and a thaw. Rain and a thaw,

the mind overturns it all in a thought

of the circling waters, ice free,

the memory of melting, the thunder

of falls without a muting contour

of encroaching ice, when the breeze

of daybreak may be relied upon

to move the river in a recurring pattern,

free as the wind, of cross-current waves.