Walking Julia to School, Chinese New Year 2011

Short days and grey days, long nights and snowy;
Glowering skies and icy rain—Thor’s hammer sounding in elemental fury.
But now the dawn.
Gone are the clouds and glorious the sun,
Scattered the encircling gloom and in its wake a sea of glass and sparkle—
A city of emeralds glinting in the morning light.
Every twig and branch of every barren tree embalmed in a sheet of shimmering crystal;
Every latent leaf or bud encased in a chrysalis of ice;
Nature’s own Christmas bulbs outshining our man-made imitations.
Every bourgeois denizen rouses from her seasonal stupor,
Grasps for a cell phone camera, and tries in vain
To capture something of this splendor. The beauty almost aches.
With the dying Faust we whisper: “Augenblick, du bist so schön, erwarte!”
All around the icy craft of some celestial sculptor
Hails the Year of the Rabbit with a psalm of regeneration.
One would want a Haydn or a Mozart to sing the matins of this day.