When weather-white descends to meet the rising steam of ground-thaw, the heat of night is bound in velvet icing.  And as I walk the violent mixture blends to form a dream of life in death---or is this sod so frosted, really resting  breathless?  He who picks the law to smother every passion might feel oppressed when silent night-storm costs us God and mind. But I, who only talk as prelude to another intercourse, find a wife within the winter fashion.  To the late home-comer no nude were so enticing, nor could summer win so warm a smile as this kind  of tethered form that forces  me to bare myself and laugh at fancied freedom. For then I am reminded that without the partner's weight there is no dance.  Nor left  to myself, would I have begun to write this poem after midnight.                                                                       -- Mahlon H. Smith