After Sorrow

I used to think    something good must be coming    when a day came like this one    The light strong again after rain    after the slow gathering-in of the days    the nights   getting darker and colder I am older now       A day comes The poplars    not torches    but lit with their own leaves dying       A mist breathes out from the shining fields And this is good       The light    the mist the color of the leaves       A broken quorum of brown wrens    flutter    and settle their paths of flight binding up the branches of a shattered apple tree   Abandoned fruit gleams    wet and round and red against the cracked black trunk Something good    The present voices of the birds    The sun rising in November