Celebration

Brilliant, this day -- a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green --
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes --
greener than ever before.

And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!

A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.