Snowdrops

My parents stand in the sunlit spaces and say
they have never seen so many snowdrops.
There are frosted drifts by the orchard gate,
in shaded woody places and on green banks
Each opal bloom luminous.

Snowdrops

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

Louise Glück

for a dear friend
whose gray elegance
reminds me of snowdrops