The still blue flame behind her eyes
Flicks in a gusty bleak surprise:
She sees her garden burnt and thinned
By smoky frost and autumn wind,
And hears her feet crunch scentless sound
From ghostly leaves along the ground.
She stops, but can not bear to feel
The asters glazed in arctic steel.
The futile gesture of her arm
Beneath the hemlock’s clicking form
Is pitiful: the formant sprays
Can’t hold their beauty through these days.
She leans above the brittle brook—
It stares to ice her wistful look,
And all the anxious prayers she cries
Are lost in heaven’s frozen skies.