Black and White

Deep Snow
The dead might wake into a world like this,

And know its white lost ecstasy their own.

I am a stranger wearing flesh and bone,

Peering beyond my dusty chrysalis.

No scent or sound invades the integrity

Of peace beneath the ermined thatch of pine.

Nor whir of wing, nor quick heart-beat of mine

Shall spill the cradled silence from a tree.

No God of Sinai shatters the timeless pause

With “Thou shalt not.”
But from each holy bush

Love speaks, articulate in this white hush.

Here life and death may meet, obeying new laws,

And mingling as easily as flake with flake.

Into a world like this the dead might wake.–Emma Gray Trigg