nights, whose meaning needs no glozing;
In the hue ofa beech
- neither quite somber gray
nor placid blue - that teases
all
sight and belief;
In the way this sun at solstice
jumps up from the
hill
and asks no reading, but affirmation in the chill;
In the ermine who fought the owl,
resisting negation:
alone now, scarlet in snow - conspicuous, stiffened;
In the steam of your coffee at dawn,
pale testimony to addiction, harmless,
perhaps more so than others you want;
In one long-damaged knee
whose cartilage resists your walk, and warns
against a mock-tranquility;
In the bland and sweet obedience
of your dogs, which raises questions
that touch on your worthiness, competence;
In the warmth (to which you'll return)
of shelter, so easily cancelled should your fuel
withhold its fire - a residue of the sun;
In fire, that has the power and glory
of "the things that have been made," as St. Paul saith,
commanding faith, however airy;
In warmth and shelter and fire,
to which ofcourse you will return,
for which you are whetting desire;
In desire, whose quenching is life
and death, as poets used to say -
by enjoinder and designation:
husband, wife;
In this cheery fall of siskins
to an earth that you'd thought barren: in their number,
that may be somewhere counted, their busy-ness;
In their vanishing
- before you can count them yourself–
that sermonizes vanity;
In the far waw of a power saw
that binds on a softwood's sap, congealed:
the logger swears profanely, we are not healed;
