I
wake to find the snow, winter’s architect,
has
built the world again, a landscape silent,
generous,
where, with its thin weight,
the
quarter moon leans on one elbow.
On
the table in the hickory bowl, a pear
distills
its own serenity. The kettle, lifted
before
it hisses, whines, then goes quiet,
like
a child nodding back to sleep.
One
cup and I’ll find my shoes.
The
stool scrapes the floor, shrugging off
its
loneliness as I stand to go. Tea floods
the
drain and ebbs away, like dawn’s tide
as
light crawls in to reclaim day.
Outside
the first birds clear their throats
of
darkness. A pickup cuts through the slush;
before
it’s gone, the birds have fallen silent.
It
goes unsung, the early song,
the
unhurried hymn of morning.
Magazine