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December in Missouri

First Prize

Already dead from November's freeze

Or hunters.

And the trees--only brittle skeletons remain

After the Passover of the Angel of Frost;

Still, the reddened hand of a farmer can point

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The difference

Between Elm, which reaches upwards,

And Oak, which reaches out.

Perhaps the cold which reddens the farmer's hand

Has also touched his heart

This December in Missouri.

(This poem won first prize in the Harvard Summer School Poetry Contest. The contest elicited 65 entries and was judged by Thomas Babe '63, teaching fellow in English, Neil Rudenstine, tutor in English, and Fred Anderson, instructor in Expository Writing.)

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