The Ballet

The snowflakes fall as dancers to the ground
Suspended; high-wire, acrobatic flight.
Balletic poetry, read with silent sound,
The voices lost within the drowning night.
Cold kisses fall in place of absent leaves
To land on every place that they can find;
On frozen, gilded ground and bough of tree,
On trace of rushes, knotted and entwined.
Stars, like crystal, decorate the sky,
Ornamented white on antique black.
Reflected off the ice and off the eye,
Between the folds of weather-beaten track.
Pointe, pirouette, jeté and entrechat ;
The company of snowflakes fall like stars.