Refinery

There is a type of grass called bluestem which, in my local experience, is anything but blue --

but there is no doubting the blue of this stem -- Virgo Maria blue, if anything, with a winter born baby bud to boot. 

There is an extravagance to winter, formal, subtle, easy-to-miss,

and its wayfaring tangles lead to where only the most intrepid dare to follow --

the triple signpost of here, before and after.

Who, after all, even remembers the soft, cream-colored cradles of infancy ?

or the cat's-cradle strings and twirling double-dutch ropes of childhood ?

We sweat under layers of a here and now as over-embroidered as a bad Christmas sweater.

Something more inorganic, we plead; we require diamonds, granite countertops, gold-plated bathroom fixtures ! Or, if not that, the interface of water and ice, of light and shadow

which we can, at will, reduce to a palette of black and white and gray.

Glory be to God for dappled things -- said Father Hopkins
-- all things counter, original, spare, strange --

meaning this --

and this --

and this !

Who could ask for a more glamorous demise,

borne off onto a ocean of milky twilight

on a ship of fantastic rigging and gorgeous sail

will a hold crammed with dried berries

adequate for any voyage.

And if a body meet a body coming through the rye, well, all aboard:

it's a passage booked before time began, destination unknown.