Winter Shower

This morning’s miracle shakes my faith
So one who will not yet believe his eyes
Stares from behind the steamy wraith
Of breath and suspicion and rubs the lies

Of yesterday’s memory out of his head,
And rousing the world that belongs to him
He walks from the house to his cattle shed
To scowl at the winter’s latest whim.

For there is a threat in this chiseled tree,
The weighted fence, the shining path
The field now washed by a glassy sea,
A sudden and far gleaming aftermath

To the crystal wish of a winter shower
As if the lifeless, the songless, the doomed
Were the only things that could come to flower
Where the thrush once flew and the lilacs bloomed.

And I am glad that the chimney yonder
Throws some smoke the color of steel
Into the night or I might wonder
Which after all of these worlds is real.