First Snow / Charles E.S. Wood

       
First Snow

The cows are bawling in the mountains.
The snow flakes fall.
They are leaving the pools and pebbled fountains;
Troubled, they bawl.
They are winding down the mountain's shoulders
Through the open pines,
Through wild rose thicket and the granite boulders,
In broken lines.
Each calf trots close beside its mother
And so they go,
Bawling and calling to one another
About the snow.

---
Charles E.S. Wood (1852-1944)
from Poems from the Range, 1929

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]

Charles E.S. Wood biography