Ten Degrees

How beautiful the sun as it skims

across the air in the hush of ten degrees,

disc of palest yellow hope along a sky

of circumstance; how beautifully we watch it fall,

the random tern, forgotten mole,

the infant tree inside rough winter bark.

How beautiful this frost, female fingers

tracing down the glass, how beautiful

this world too cold to criticize itself;

how beautiful Earth’s creatures are, happy

and forever safe from the only perfect tragedy,

which is of course to never have been born.