#93 In a Gray Week

While we, unknowing,
sleep, turn, dream…
our tangled limbs
beneath a heap of quilts,
the world remakes itself.

We wake to see, outside the window
by the bed, each branch,
each slender needle
on each pine
inside a sheath of ice.

The wind in fits and bursts
spits bits of glass
above the lake.
And as we watch
for one brief, stunning moment

the rising sun cracks through
the cover of the sky,
illuminates the woods.
The trees seem made
entirely of light.

We might as easily
have missed this.
I quickly bless the wind
or crows that woke us
in the nick of time.

Within an hour,
by the time we normally rise,
the world has dimmed again. 
The same old blankets for a sky.
The trees are only trees.