At Winter's End

Copyright 2010
Judith J. Bentley

At Winter's end through a field of mud
we made our final way to the river
where trees, bent and gnawed by beavers,
leaned into death like ghosts
stripped of their once glad breath.

Over fallen limbs we laid our fears
and talked of what had been eaten away
or heedlessly taken and would not return--
the quiet wreckage, the slow extinctions,
the forever missing things.

Before the rains had set in
or the groundhog had seen his shadow,
the red bird took refuge in the underbrush
and we felt a Presence that had long been sleeping
awaking under cover of night.