Tribute

It was how shadows in blue branches made tributaries 

across snow. I paused, not yet thinking about eons of

early spring suns but

of one long ago dawn, indelible and new, gilding 

the deep pines with its fragile birr, like an egg yolk cracked 

over silvered lake, needled forest. Some firsts refuse to fade

but the dog nudged my boot, snow-faced and pink-tongued

and I was again in these woods, trying to shake 

off that bright magic

though it coursed here too, outlined in blue dim like watery kin

suspended between what seemed to have ended

and what had yet to begin

as if to show how each daybreak is

a first: singular, inevitable,

yet rooted as it crosses an initiatory sky 

by clever, branching lines. What fades 

isn’t lost. Shadows move in generations,

a lineage of light.