“Gymnopédies No. 3”

This sunlight on snow. This decrescendo of covered stumps & brush — stop for it. Stop before the sled end- over-ends down the chin of the hill — the way it always will at the rock ⅔ of the way down. Stop & shiver in it: the ring of snow inside gloves, the cusp of red forehead like a sun just waiting to top the hill. Every ill-built snowball waiting to be thrown, every bell-shaped angel stamped over the brown leaves. When my daughter ranges in winter, she works every dazzling angle — the crestfallen pinecones, the grizzled beards of bushes in the morning, a furnace’s windup huffing in this throat- clearing of snow.