Climbing clematis

It looks dead and gone
the bone dry brown twine
wrapped around an old pipe
beside a frozen fountain
Winter has unkindly stripped
the life from a once vivid vine
left a withered skeleton in its place
But all is not as it seems on the surface
for when the robins return
to pull the fat worms
from the spring soaked earth
tendrils of green velvet ribbon
stream forth from the brown branches
and by the time the wood ducks
lead their parade of chicks upstream
that ancient pipe is a thing of beauty
cloaked in a constellation
of bright purple stars