Peach Fires

Out in the orchards the dogs stood Almost frozen in the bleak spring night & Mister dragged out into the rows Between his peach trees the old dry limbs Building at regular intervals careful pyres While the teeth of the dogs chattered & snapped & the ice began to hang long as whiskers From the globes along the branches & at his signal we set the piles of branches ablaze Tending each carefully so as not to scorch The trees as we steadily fed those flames Just enough to send a rippling glow along Those acres of orchard where that body— Sister Winter—had been held so wisely to the fire