and when kindling
    will no longer suffice
             those dried fragments
                 so easily sacrificed
   i am called to surrender my heartwood                
             may it burn slow steady and bright
          through the length of freeze and darkness
            until miracle tender brave branching
                     when blessed returns our Sol
               *burning Self that we may thrive
                        keeping vision fires alive

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.