Snow Day
If I lived a thousand lives
of great honor and renown
this simple day with you
would be the jewel in my crown.

3:22 a.m.
At 3:22 a.m. out my back door
the ice sparkles
a sky full of stars brought low
while a baby sleeps above

I am grateful for the darkness that allows
the frozen fog to stick a sheen
to the now celestial
white grass

And as the low clouds of the night sky
turn with the dawn to a single gray light
the hot water handle
squeaks

And as the shower roars to life
I hear the squirming of a squeaky little sleeper
emerging from the darkness,
breathless, with a smile.

Prophets
Pregnant robin waiting for the sunrise.
The sky as copper as her breast,
a candy apple perched precariously on a barren branch.
The dirt and her feet too frozen for feasts,

and yet as the limbs of this maple move:
magic hour arrives.
And with it the frightening becomes flying,
and our amber sky becomes porous with promise.

Amidst the honeycombed hustle of a busy dawn
she mixes with starlings savaged with cosmic plumage.
Blue-sheened be-speckled harbingers of darkness
prophets of a long cold night.