First Snow, Kerhonkson

for Alan

This, then, is the gift the world has given me

(you have given me)

softly the snow

cupped in hollows

lying on the surface of the pond

matching my long white candles

which stand at the window

which will burn at dusk while the snow

fills up our valley

this hollow

no friend will wander down

no one arriving brown from Mexico

from the sunfields of California, bearing pot

they are scattered now, dead or silent

or blasted to madness

by the howling brightness of our once common vision

and this gift of yours—

white silence filling the contours of my life.