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 needlesor impatient points of buds on spindly bushes – greener than ever before.
And the way the conifershold new cones to the light for the blessing,a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the windtranscribes for them!
A day that shines in the coldlike a first-prize brass band swinging alongthe streetof a coal-dusty village, wholly at oddswith the claims of reasonable gloom.