A Winter Without Snow by Bruce Guernsey

A Winter Without Snow

In a winter without snow
how do we know the deer
have crossed the hard fields at night?

In a winter without snow
there’s no white to glaze the sun,
gray on the hill at dawn—

no steam from the ice, no
sign of the stream underneath.
No hush in the woods, only the bone

rattle of branches as the cold
winds rises, the skeletal
clicking of sticks.

by Bruce Guernsey

Editor’s Note: Spare yet vivid imagery sets the tone for the narrator’s relationship with nature in this poem.