Martin Elster 

Waiting for Spring

What do the ectotherms all think
When their pond becomes a small ice rink?
How do they breathe? What do they eat?
Do they drink or even blink?

How ultra-slow do their hearts beat
When they nearly have no body heat
As they hang in suspended animation
Beneath that hard and thick ice sheet?

While skaters glide in figurations
Do the fish and frogs feel strange vibrations?
Do the skaters ever think of those
Dreaming beasts who, for the duration,

Must feel as numb as a frozen nose?
Do the skaters, cheeks pink as a rose,
Take any notice in their brains
Of the life below their skates and toes?

Yet there they wait, blood in their veins
As still as the crystal cellophane.
Beneath the pond’s dense windowpane,
They feel no joy and feel no pain.

Warmth

The sun, a swollen ruby, droops between
   the ridge and clouds, its glare
across the faces of the steadfast pair —
   the first time it’s been seen

today by the lone hiker or his collie.
   It brings a bit of heat,
unlike a winsome girl who seemed as sweet
   as berries of a holly.

Though shelter for wild birds in a snowstorm,
   the conifer of her,
whose leaves at first seduced him with their stir,
   he found was far from warm.

In swarms above the snow, crows congregate.
   From barren oaks they stare
at man and dog and, with grotesque fanfare,
   caw harshly to berate

the two for having the audacity
   to plod along this path.
Their shrieks of such vexation and such wrath
   would frighten every tree,

if trees could hear and if they could be frightened.
   Boughs scatter their shrill cries,
each utterance as stinging as her lies
   had been. The sky has lightened,

and yet the sun will disappear behind
   the hills in half an hour.
He knows he doesn’t have the slightest power
   to stop it, or to find

the warmth he wanted from another being
   still glowing like an ember,
yet gladly leaves that radiance, as December
   and the red sun are fleeing.