Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift. Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man will stand stack- still, hearing his youth in the distant Latin chanting of a train. Pray for us now.
the sky, the snow
builds a mountain
unto itself.
Some drifts can be
thirty feet high.
Picture a house.
Then bury it.
Plows come from both
ends of the road,
foot by foot, month
by month. This year
they didn't meet
in the middle
until mid-June.
Maybe I'm not
expressing this
well. Every year,
snow erases
the highest road.
We must start near
the bottom and
plow toward each
other again.