The things I’d never liked,
like winter light in January,

the long cold wasted afternoons
too bright upon the scumbled 

cusp of December’s wooded
grays and greens—

to slowly come to like such things,
how much richer they seem 

for their unexpected seduction,
like bitter flavors or certain music;

like a cloud unmingling
to show a higher cloud 

moving the other way. Fear 
and loneliness, I could say: 

wracks the wind has rent by grace. 
For witness that shredded circle 

rimmed with white like blazing wire
and what now shines 

upon a few cans
in the snow.

Published in Orion Magazine, 2007