A Winter Hymn
The snow melt falls
like footsteps
coming closer. You hesitate —
you hear your old friend’s
‘Old too early,
wise too late.’
You’ve learned his lesson.
He left it that there’s not
too much to forgive.
You know the earth
abounds with benefits
and the chance to live
on it’s a privilege.
In the bad year
good hay’s
gold bullion in the bank.
As many as are
all the gone days
are beacons and bounties —
like the salmon
spawning in three
rivers in the city
for the first time
in a century.
As human as work is
in saw- and splitting it,
or ‘winning’ it, you feel
something divine
in wood and turf that warms
the family hearth, to which you kneel.
My friend says the mind of the honeybee
is a map of bloom.
It conjures lavish crops.
The ghost of winter snows
preserves a promise every February
in snowdrops.