A Pitcher of Summer

One morning, before the leaves began changing
I caught a piece of summer and poured it into a pitcher;

This I placed in the cellar on a shelf collecting dust .
Autumn, then winter, rose up from the sea, and my
Garden was a garden filled with unbroken snow.

No flower strained its face to the ice giants' whisper,
No life coloured the vision of a newborn Spring babe.
My cellar-water dripping into a pail

And I lifted my piece of summer
Like a piece of memory or a dream

Like these, caught on film
And carried it to the garden floes,
The wind turning drifting stars to madness.

Poured forth gracefully, this ætheric tincture
Lifts winter's coat-of-arms with coaxing aromas and electricity.
Used with vigilance, a Pitcher of Summer stirs a memory into swooning,
And bravely, the flowers of the past will stretch their limbs into the sky
While snow falls quietly all around.