Awake with the woods of knowing, with roots that lie below ice, where the fish swim deep against winter, with the mountain’s weight upon the land.

The wild wind suggests that we remain together, naked upon the cliff’s edge, with all the dead wisdom of rocks around us.

Oh, there is music in silence that knows the shape of longing through the trees that are the end of winter, that strip the dead leaves and stir your hand.

The green reclaims the time of a world beneath the frost, still alive, while the earth dreams of bloom.

• Muriel Rukeyser