All night the wind swept over the house <br />And through our dream <br />Swirling the snow up through the pines, <br />Ruffling the white, ice-capped clapboards, <br />Rattling the windows, <br />Rustling around and below our bed <br />So that we rode <br />Over wild water <br />In a white ship breasting the waves. <br />We rode through the night <br />On green, marbled <br />Water, and, half-waking, watched <br />The white, eroded peaks of icebergs <br />Sail past our windows; <br />Rode out the night in that north country, <br />And awoke, the house buried in snow, <br />Perched on a <br />Chill promontory, a <br />Giant's tooth <br />In the mouth of the cold valley, <br />Its white tongue looped frozen around us, <br />The trunks of tall birches <br />Revealing the rib cage of a whale <br />Stranded by a still stream; <br />And saw, through the motionless baleen of their branches, <br />As if through time, <br />Light that shone <br />On a landscape of ivory, <br />A harbor of bone.<br /><br />William Jay Smith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/winter-morning/
