Out in the orchards the dogs stood
Almost frozen in the bleak spring night
& Mister dragged out into the rows
Between his peach trees the old dry limbs
Building at regular intervals careful pyres
While the teeth of the dogs chattered & snapped
& the ice began to hang long as whiskers
From the globes along the branches
& at his signal we set the piles of branches ablaze
Tending each carefully so as not to scorch
The trees as we steadily fed those flames
Just enough to send a rippling glow along
Those acres of orchard where that body—
Sister Winter—had been held so wisely to the fire
