Out shoveling snow the morning after the big storm
I was just in time to see the sun jutting over the hill of trees,
catch its big lick of light turning the top branches
to golden boughs, and hear an invisible cardinal singing
and singing what sounded like his spring song, claiming space,
though maybe only his way of saying the storm was over,
the real world returned, and with it, I thought -- as sweat ran
fat hot drops along the ridges of my face, my shirt grew
sticky with salt from my back and belly, taking the ache
in my arms as they hoisted shovelful after shovelful and
cast them to a mound that rose like a marker of white quartz
over a grave -- with it had come the hard work of the world,
maybe the fortitude it called for, the way lovers may wake
the morning after and hear real wind and rain battering
windows, and know they’ve to leave this little room
and go out under ordinary weather again, in which (they
listen hard, hearing it) a bird is singing its own way
into the world, ringing them round with what its breath
does in the here and now, measuring every instant.