Winter Day and Night

By Maryann Olsen MacMurray

It’s been snow since

early morning,

both the easily seen

and the hardly there kinds,

swelling the air except where

in the heat of dark ground

it is not to be found;

Nothing,

not even your hand,

can contain it:

Oh,

that virtue

is so fine a thing,

and

all the night

and all the night

I marveled at the fragile white of it.