Out Walking in Snowfall

                                                                             The path lead into wood. Other hands had beaten it                                                                              With purposes the same, yet different. Another owl                                                                              Watched my climb from the same tree that haunted                                                                              Them, that limbed their memories and flight                                                                                   into the same indifferent sky                                                                              That swallowed their impressive cry                                                                              Where only night and light would never die.                                                                                Would never die . . . because I carried them,                                                                              Up the hill beneath the passing swallows,                                                                              Through heaven’s flashing, through gently falling snow,                                                                              Through winds that searched, with nowhere else to go.                                                                              A cabin built in 1932, its skeleton still proud,                                                                              That housed some lightly sleeping child, that stirred                                                                              With laughter and the common words, had waited                                                                              As if it knew a man would come again to oppose his fantasy                                                                                   to what the army of the years had done,                                                                              To sit a space and lift his glass to what was past,                                                                              To find the strength for what we knew would come.