First Snow - Mary Oliver

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere

calling us back to why, how, 
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing 
past windows, an energy it seemed

would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.

The silence 
is immense
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles

of ribbons, the broad fields
 smolder with light, a passing
 creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills


and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain--not a single
answer has been found--


walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields
feels like one.

~Mary Oliver~