YUKON WINTER MORNING

Yukon winter morning

The sun today is paper-white,
no trace of yellow in its light,
above the hills a hand’s-breadth high,
blinding against the eastern sky.

The moon’s white wafer, still and spare,
floats like a memory on the air,
imbibing the surrounding blue
as if the sky were staining through.

Snow on the shoulders of the spruce,
as yet by no wind shaken loose,
redoubles to the dazzled sight
the sun’s uncompromising light;

or, if in shade, foretells with gray
the swift declining of the day.


                                                   Tom Lips 25/11/2021