A WINTER POEM

Talking in Their Sleep

"You think I am dead,"

The apple tree said,

"Because I have never a leaf to show,

Because I stoop

And my branches droop,

And the dull gray mosses over me grow.

But I'm still alive in trunk and shoot;

The buds of next May

I fold away

But I pity the withered grass at my root.”

"You think I am dead,"

The quick grass said,

"Because I have parted with stem and blade.

But under the ground

I am safe and sound

With the snow's thick blanket over me laid.

I'm all alive, and ready to shoot,

Should the spring of the year

Come dancing here

But I pity the flower without branch or root."

"You think I am dead,"

A soft voice said,

"Because not a branch or root I own.

I never have died, but close I hide

In a plumy seed that the wind has sown.

Patient I wait through the long winter hours;

You will see me again

I shall laugh at you then

Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers."

~Edith M. Thomas~

1854-1925

~~~

Edith Matilda Thomas was an American author and poet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Thomas was born in 1854 in Chatham Center, Ohio. She received her education at the Geneva Normal Institute. Thomas gained national attention with her poetry and novels that reflected her interest in Ohio and the Western Reserve. Scribner'', The Atlantic Monthly, The Century and other prominent magazines published her poems. 

Her writings include "A New Year's Masque and Other Poems," "The Inverted Torch," "The Dancers," and "The Children of Christmas." 

Thomas acknowledged the influence of American author Helen Hunt Jackson on her own work.