Sharp Star

The year’s first snow:
white and gray feathers on the grass.
Inside me, the wing
of your soft body unfolds.

All the herbs, indoors for winter,
pull toward the window,
their stems turned veins
in the absence of light.

So many green things to show you;
white and black things, too:
the fierce, hard dazzle
of winter stars.

The distance is closing
between us, between that clean sky
and this muddied winter yard.
Between the stars and the ground.

How, child, will you come?
Like a stem bent to light?
Or like a sharp star,
bright and burning?