Tributaries

Kings Mountain

Snow billowed down all night and all day,

The sky in the west as it so often does

Opened at sunset, and the stars were still there,

Five of the planets rose in a line before dawn,

The sun in its bristling arc turned everything gold

Including us as we moved beside a small run

Muscular under the ice which boomed as it broke

With the weight of the air or the splay of a deer

And we stopped in our tracks taking stock of our lives,

The lyric of water, the anthem of light,

So much to protect, so much to pass on to the next.