Renaissance.

WINTER'S END

Once in a wood at winter's end,

The withered sun, becoming young,

Turned the white silence into sound:

Bird after bird rose up in song.

The skeletons of snow-blocked trees

Linked thinning shadows here and there,

And those made mummy by the freeze

Spangled their mirrors on cold air.

Whether they moved — perhaps they spun,

Caught in a new but known delight —

Was hard to tell, since shade and sun

Mingled to hear the birds recite.

No body of this sound I saw,

So glassed and shining was the world

That swung on a sun-and-ice seesaw

And fought to have its leaves unfurled.

Hanging its harvest in between

Two worlds, one lost, one yet to come,

The wood's remoteness, like a drum,

Beat the oncoming season in.

Then every snow bird on white wings

Became its tropic counterpart,

And, in a renaissance of rings,

I saw the heart of summer start.

Howard Moss

Come on, mushrooms!