In Winter
Robert Wallace

It is hard, inland, in winter.
When the fields are motionless in snow
to remember waves, to remember the wide, sloshing immensity

of the Atlantic, continuous, green in the cold, taking snow
or rain into itself,

to realize the endurance of the tilting bell buoy
(hour by hour, years through) that clangs, clangs,

from land; even in storm and night-howling
snow, wet, red, flashing
to mark the channel. Some things
are, even if no one comes.