A Winter Day

a poem

Today, the first warm breath
blew over the frozen fields, bringing thaw.
All winter my refrain has run
“I all alone beweep my outcast state,”
for the day-long darkness makes outcasts of us all.
But now, Dante’s sunlight, dancing,
quickens the snow, which liquid
runs in rivers down the road
and flings glistening strands of foam
over the sidewalk where my sneakers wade
through lakes of many waters.

The sky has remembered how to be blue,
and I who had died am alive again.
I have washed the blood from my eyes;
Water muddying earth has washed blind eyes.

I watch the sky fill up with light:
the good measure, pressed down,
shaken together, and running over.
No one can gaze upon the world
without a taste of him.

The blue eyes of the world are looking upward,
and in looking at them, I see the grace
that answers long days spent
encased in Mary’s question as the cold:
What is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

What do you plan to do?

I am going to walk the rivers in the street
and wait for spring.