This Midday Gray (Winter Solstice, 2019)

This midday gray
may stay. Tree-shadows on the snow
have measure and restraint to show
a blinded day,

not like lit snow.
In their blue-tinted, easeful way
they please eyes that might glance away
but for that glow:

for what shows gray
seems poised within the ebb and flow
of yet-to-be and once-was-so.
The shortest day,

snow-brightened though,
goes soonest gray —— though we who say
the shortest truth long for delay.
We let things go ——

or let things stay;
and inward fast or outward slow,
the wind of years will stir, and blow
us all astray;

and to and fro,
within, without, we swing and sway
from shortest to the longest way
from shortest to the longest day ——
from solstice day to solstice day.
To brightest midday's grayest gray
we can but go.


Copyright 2019 Mark Rich