49
A Garden
About the railway station as the taxicabs leave,
the smoke from their exhaust pipes is murky blue—
stinking flowers, budding, unfolding, over the ruts in the snow.

50
A black horse and a white horse, pulling a truck this winter day,
as the smoke of their nostrils reach to the ground,
seem fabulous.

51
The dead tree at the corner
from the gray boughs of which the bark has fallen
in places and all the twigs—
be thankful, you other trees, 
that, bare and brown, are only leafless
in a winter of your lives.

52
Now that black ground and bushes—
saplings, trees,
each twig and limb— are suddenly white with snow,
and earth becomes brighter than the sky,

that intricate shrub
of nerves, veins, arteries—
myself—uncurls
its knotted leaves
to the shining air.

Upon this wooded hillside,
pied with snow, I hear
only the melting snow
drop from the twigs.