THE NAMELESS SEASON 



The coarse-grained snow is strewn 

 thickly with shards of bark that the trees 

 have sloughed in their long hibernation, 

 with shreds and tatters of their tempest- 

 torn branches. But all this litter does 

 not offend the eye nor look out of place, 

 like that which is scattered in fields and 

 about homesteads. When this three 

 months' downfall of fragments sinks to 

 the carpet of flattened leaves, it will be 

 at one with it, an inwoven pattern, as 

 comely as the shifting mesh of browner 

 shadows that trunks and branches weave 

 between the splashes of sunshine. Among 

 these is a garnishment of green moss 

 patches and fronds of perennial ferns 

 which tell of life that the stress of win- 

 ter could not overcome. One may dis- 

 cover, amid the purple lobes of the squir- 

 relcup leaves, downy buds that promise 

 blossoms, and others, callower, but of like 

 promise, under the rusty links of the ar- 

 butus chain. 



One hears the resonant call of a wood- 

 pecker rattled out on a seasoned branch 

 or hollow stub, and may catch the muffled 

 beat of the partridge's drum, silent since 

 the dreamy days of Indian summer, now 

 3 



