Winter Wanderlust - Bitterroot Valley, Montana

"...My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway...

...I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone...."

-From The Sound of the Trees by  Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Wint'ry Community - Bitterroot Valley, Montana

"...But the first thing next morning we reflected

If one by one we counted people out

For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long

To get so we had no one left to live with.

For to be social is to be forgiving...."  

- From The Star-splitter by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

(Click here to read the entire poem, in all it's small-town story charm.)

One Day Later - Missoula, Montana

"...Her early leaf's a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf..."

- from Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

I kid you not - this is the same leaf cluster as pictured in yesterday's post, on one of the trees I say hello to on my mostly-daily lunchtime walk. The amazing daily changes of spring inspire toward incremental possibles - yesterday doesn't have to the same as today - and for this visible hope we are thankful.

Birches Brush the Winter Sky, Missoula, Montana

"Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen."

- From "Birches" by Robert Frost

Read further thoughts on this poem here.