Poem for Sunday

Sunday Song

The channel whitens, a pathway
crystal over leaves once golden
now crisped into stillness
beneath a fresh layer of ice.
Rot. Beautiful food for worms
and beetles and grass
underneath the ice, underneath
my feet. As I step, crackling
the proud autumn flame
now extinguished into dust.

The ice lays a new path, clean,
clear, stark, with colored breath.

A new turf, popping. It seems
my very small steps
have changed on this new course.
I did not expect the way to be
green, or easy, or warm, yet
the freezing world holds
a beauty of its own
— oh ye sea monsters! —
an ocean of ferocity in waves
that even now creates
a landscape of oceanic dunes.

I think I will kneel and sing

and salt my body with this life.