Jupiter rules the night
in the long parade
of far off suns
shining in the deep dark,
the same winter sky
my mother walked beneath,
her feet in drifting snow,
the quiet all around her
down the steep hill
to the subway el,
walking toward my birth.
She was dressed nicely
as she always was.
She didn’t mind
the cold wet snow;
she was going to deliver.
Huge white flakes
covered the cobble stones,
the streets and sidewalks,
blanketing her with quiet,
her happiness and fear full
down the Marble Hill,
my mother and father
alone in the falling snow
with me urging them,
a presence within her
as they walked on
under street lights
in the January snow.

Before the river and long wind to the sea,
the streams that funnel and drop
from seeping springs and glacial ice,
before the mystery of birth
in the rock and cave chasm,
water wells in the great darkness,
the vast primordial
of sin unremembered,
a wealth of forgiveness
where the treasure of silence
yields the gift unbroken
toward the dream of light
and desert of the world
with its infant bawl
for one more taste
of Her unending life.

The music of the forest
falls from the trees,
follows the creeks
down through the stony wynd
over logs and slumped banks
to gather and seed the song
along the winter barren,
heard faintly by the river
where we sit beside fires
listening in the dark.

The year turns over,
some inner gear clicks
and the limp lessens
balanced by the faces
of love and grief
melding into light,
shining through
winter cold on seeds
of years to come,
blessing the unseen
as stories to be told
while the deep earth
awaits in silence.