My lifelong friend, I take you in each hand,
All warm and gentle, soft like butterflies
That dance between my fingers, strand by strand,
And onward glide and slide with soft surmise,
Slip on and off the needles’ points, your plies
Curl up and round to make each mounting row. …

I dream of owls upon a chilly night, With feathers warm and deep and soft, In tawny brown and silver, flecks of white, Their pinions long to float the hours aloft. This purple, silent, sodden twilight glow — My heart a-shiver with the growing cold — Brings thoughts how night would find me gliding low Above the grass or crying long and bold To moon and meadow if I were an owl; I’d chortle to my mate through purple eves, All unafraid of winter’s bite and growl, Just sheltering while branches waved and heaved With bluster, while the clouds went…

To all who are dead, to all who are yet to be born,
This day the world turned, moon has set with the year
And sun rose up on tomorrow; tomorrow is here.
This day is our gift from the gods, the gift of the morn.

Listen, ye friends from afar in the annals of earth,
We’ve seen the good and the evil and known it was we;
The reckoning falls to the just, to choose and to be,
To bring the earth through her moments of death and rebirth.

Ourselves the makers of day, the menders of night, Ourselves…

Wake when the moon gleams And the spirits of trees Dance in the night with the wind. Dance with the night. Bow with the breeze and laugh With the upturned nose of the fox, Barking her joy as the fingers Of night caress her soft fur. Dance with the night. Watch with the vole that patters Out in the darkness to fetch The fallen crumbles of day To feast in the starlight. Dance with the night. Forget you are weary and sing With the full-throated mockingbird’s joy, Aloft in the treetops that shelter His carol of wonder From careless eyes…