This is the blessed hour when shadows lengthen
on the blue-red snow, when skiers mount
the billows with an ease, a forward shush,
and memory excites the tilt toward home:
the woody fire that blossoms over logs,
the candle and the book, hibernal harvest.
Motion through the trees collects the soul,
a whispering in transit, wind that’s caught
like music in the flute’s brief wooden throat.
This is the hour of accepted grace,
when everywhere we’ve been comes down to this:
the edge of day, where particles of thought
cohere like atoms in a structured dance
around one center that we call ourselves,
like poetry: the patterned perfect dance
of sentences that rise and fall with sense,
a language adequate to what we see
and feel and hear, a broad equivalence,
the center of the mind as clear as winter
with its empty backlit bedrock sky,
the motes of snow-dust blowing in the trees.
This is the hour when skiers and their skis
make one crisp sound, when every object
revels in its name, when home is home.