Moment Toward Spring

This is the day when on the hills of noon
The winter’s towers burn, the torchman sun
Makes virtue of destruction as he strikes
Flame to the drifts and melts them one by one.

And everywhere the tyranny is broken,
The shining fields appear, the poplars stand
Ready to publish leaves, the messenger pigeons
Rise from the barn and circle over the land.

I stare from my door amazed at the resurrection
Of rising life where the snowbank burned, I note
A fire more fierce and strange than ever I set
Under a kettle to pulse in the chimney’s throat.