Spring waterfall
grows by the day as ice --
somewhere -- shrinks.
Spring Cascade [Haiku]
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Sun-sparkles on the lake’s far end
look icy cool beneath blue skies,
but Winter shivers, I suspend,
because late Spring is telling lies.
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
The shades of night were falling fast,
As though an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!
In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped the groan,
Excelsior!
"Try not the Pass!" the old man said;
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!
"Oh stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!
"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!"
This was the peasant's last Good-night,
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!
At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star,
Excelsior!
Stony & Frozen:
and yet there's something
the mind loves about
snowcapped mountains.
Something calming --
Maybe it's their stillness.
Maybe it's a nature sync.
Maybe it's that one is in
a green pasture with a
pleasant breeze and
sun warming one's face
as one looks upon those
harsh and barren lands.
Maybe it's awe at the proximity
of the inhospitable -- the uninhabitable --
lands, lands that seem so close
to one's idyllically habitable lands.
(If owing more to their grandiosity
than true proximity.)

sun shimmer
in a dense patch looks like
a sheet of ice.