In a wide field
I am wrapped in the coat you
bought for me.
It is cold
and the air smells of snow.
I remember once
many years ago
in a fall much like this one
I watched a horse being
born,
waking to
the silence of hay
and warm barn and the
great whiteness of life.
It strikes me now
that the foal,
new on willow legs
and heart beating fast
has already grown,
beat furiously through life
and through the colours
of the years.
Wrapped in your coat
I look backwards at our time.
Shorter than the
birth and death of the field
horses.

The sky breaks with snow.
The winter will be long.