End of Winter in Long Island / Marjory Nicholls

End of Winter in Long Island

Ice-sheets like thinnest glass;
Small drifts of melting snow;
Weight of winter lifting from the wan, tired grass;
     Tree-twigs that show
Small nobbiness of buds about to break.
     High in the clear, pale sky,
     No bird I see on wing,
     Prescient of the Spring,
But aeroplanes that pass with busy whirr –
Noise dominant above the quietude
     Of Nature's stir,
(Soft, ah, soft) in the earth beneath
Half-frightened still by Winter's chilly breath.

~~
Marjory Nicholls
from Thirdly, 1930

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

Marjory Nicholls biography