1
All January, cold had gouged the ground
Under the rigid highways. Ploughs worked nights
Pushing snow out of the roads. For weeks it mounted
Alongside city traffic. Though the sun
Blazed before nightfall, crimson, green, and gold,
Slanting through blue ice, nobody noticed.
Withdrawn far into their frozen lives,
People walked fast, keeping their eyes down,
Pulling their thick coats closer.
2
It is late afternoon.
In a cafe near the airport turnoff, a man and a woman
Sit at a formica table over their supper.
They gaze and gaze at each other's shining faces.
Both are smiling. Their eyes are wet,
Their tears the bright gage of a given word
Which lifts from them now,
Strong as the crystalline blue above the city,
Wide-reaching as the winterfast countryside.
3
What sweet wind, of spring or winter,
Carries our promises,
And where does it take them
When we who gave them are gone?
4
They abide. Chance can confound us or time
Slip the knots of our strength. We fail.
But the covenants witness
That we become saints when we dare to take on a promise,
Its weight and fortune, speaking words which we cast
In the teeth of what must be. They hallow the air
They are made of and make safe the place where they stay
Whatever heaviness or danger
Come to their makers afterwards because of them.
5
This oath I swore in another century:
"I have always known you. All my life I will love you.
When I die, I will come to you. Never again will I leave."
6
The summer winds have swept the land with loosestrife,
Lavender, gentian, vetch, vervain, wild aster.
Faith was their seed, their field-unbroken silence.
They grew from the lasting covenants we made.
Now thousands of acres avalanche with blue,
Such force our promises have to come to flower.