A Thought

there is no elegy to be written, snow:
however perfect your return,
however displaced the beauty
of your occurrence
between the yearning buds of spring.

you are no travesty, no--
no transgressor of any natural or
calculable law;
your arrival is
a simple reminder:
a photograph uncovered
from years of correspondence,
an overturned stone
in an abandoned garden,
a forgotten set of initials
carved in the wood
over a door.

so if there is no rage at your coming,
no howling at your storm,
it is because of this.
no covering of what we found,
no hiding what has been bred
from this dead ground--
only a memory of what was
and what will come.