Winter Fall
The boy who became a cloud,
a wind, the northern lights,
first fell into Winter's tribe and
only later learned silence there.
He prayed to Pan in the woods,
a dog or two passing by, the
Greyhound bus on that wide avenue,
and in time Buddha too.
None of that did any good.
Still, Winter meditated on.
"Not ripe, not ripe!" was all he said.
Winter in time dropped another coin.
This time the boy was smart enough
to see himself Fall.
If he'd only known she was that
Winter gate, he thought wordlessly,
all that was before, would have
seemed more right.
His name from then was something else,
what the wind had given him.
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