The snow ceased at noon and froze at midnight.
The next day dawned in stillness, sheathed in ice.
the landscape, all reduced to lucid contours,
seemed something new, a homely kind of wonder.

He stood on the porch, unwilling yet to breach
the shining skin, unready to disperse
a certain foolish thought that rose before him:
that his or any other weight would prove

too slight to pierce the cold eternal glazing,
that he or the world had changed beyond repairing:
that as he struck the ice, his deft and prayerful
touch would set the hills all deeply chiming.

by Joseph Prever