To A Branch Felled by Ice

Now that a sheer completion rests
upon your leafy radius
and maps a last diurnal round
where living continuities
to summer’s greening way must go
beyond the slant of window light,
so must our severed certainties
amend the rites of measurement
for what endures. For what endures
when ice and stone become the stars
you long to shoulder still, and earth
prepares your countryside for sleep
with drifting shades of eiderdown
and silences that softly speak
in silences that sing to sleep?
Into your changes now abide
where darkness shines like ember blues
of snow at dusk that warm the dead
until their time. See how we shine
to give them life again. See how
we shine as though our heavy arms

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will lift and reach to hold again
this broken world by letting go.

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