What we don't notice in winter

Is the way, at sunrise,

the shadows of lodgepole pines

stripe the mountain face like bars,

reduce to pools of dark at noon,

or with the low sun's passage down,

swing open the other way,

gate to nighttime stars, the gibbous moon -

or how, in brief transit over snow and rock,

that interrupted light,

sharp-edged or softened, reaps

in its dark scythe

every color of the sunlit world

in shifting, complementary hue -

from sun, the green; from reddish bark, the blue.

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society