WINTER MAGIC
Every year we fall for it again:
The first white flakes, ski tracks on
Virgin snow, the new moon shine
On ice-encrusted lakes, rime-
Frosted lawns and shivery dawns,
Wassail and holly and Good Saint Nick.
We never learn that it is all a trick,
A sleight of the Great Magician’s hand
To hide from sight the blasted rose,
The bony skeletons of leafless trees,
Their piles of wilted, sere and crumbling leaves,
Until the last soot-blackened snow patch goes.
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