Prayer Beads

The snow on the ground

is crusted and hard.

The deer mouse leaves

no track on the

fossilized remains of

winter in retreat.

It is spring,

and I move

along a dark archipelago

of emerging earth,

floating islands 

in a white sea,

strung together

like prayer beads

in praise of fire and 

the returning sun.

Ice melts.

Sky blue deepens.

The wheel turns and

then seed factories

hire back the local spirits

furloughed in the

depths of December.

I step carefully

to protect the hope

pushing upward

on my feet.