December in Missouri

December in Missouri and the Angel of Frost has come.

I see Summer's patchwork of fields faded--

Into a unity of color: The ploughed ground,

Raped of growth at harvest time,

Can no longer hold the brown of Spring rains.

Now it seems only to reflect

A sky of grayness--as does the nearby meadow.

A meadow eaten alive months before by cows.

Still, now and then, the traveler may pass

Ruins of an already forgotten splender--

Cornfields and hayfields,

Their growth left to the hunger of a rotter called Time

And January snows.

This is the hawk's feudal domain.

A lone bird flying at midday in search of a rabbit

Already dead from November's freeze

Or hunters.

And the trees--only brittle skeletons remain

After the Passover of the Angel of Frost;

Still, the reddened hand of a farmer can point

The difference

Between Elm, which reaches upwards,

And Oak, which reaches out.

Perhaps the cold which reddens the farmer's hand

Has also touched his heart

This December in Missouri.

(This poem won first prize in the Harvard Summer School Poetry Contest. The contest elicited 65 entries and was judged by Thomas Babe '63, teaching fellow in English, Neil Rudenstine, tutor in English, and Fred Anderson, instructor in Expository Writing.)