Another storm will be here soon.
Winds drive older snow to a dune
Against the fence. The weeds
Wait for spring. Darkness leads
The eye into a half-gone moon.  

Winter creeper and bull thistle,
Though dead for-the-time-being, bristle
And spike. Bindweed and birch
Still smother stems and search
For ground to cover on this hill.

Vines looped themselves around barbed wire
All summer. Now the strangling sweetbriar
Sleeps in muddy banks of snow;
Once winter’s gone, they’ll grow
Again like an untended fire. 

To live for not-yet created things
Is to live in an air that brings
Dawn through winter trees,
Sharp air that makes lungs freeze,
And sense a song though no bird sings:

Can one live in that deadly air
Before the light, without an heir
Or benefactor,
Without thought, fact or
Unreal whims, or much of a prayer,

And believe what’s yet to be?
We survive by what we cannot see
Because it isn’t here
Yet—hope that answers fear—
As ash in earth sustains a tree.

At the horizon, light will seep.
Most, in warm beds, are still asleep.
Out here, in cold, the weed
Aspires to come back, feed
On waste, reach farther, and grow deep.