Winter-Worship

   Mother of Darkness, Our Lady,
   Suffer our supplications,
                                     our hurts come unto you.
   Hear us from absence your dwelling place,
   Whose ear we plead for.
                                       End us our outstay.

   Where darkness is light, what can the dark be,
                                                                        whose eye is single,
   Whose body is filled with splendor
In winter,
              inside the snowflake, inside the crystal of ice
Hung like Jerusalem from the tree.

January, rain-wind and sleet-wind,
Snow pimpled and pock-marked,
                                                  half slush-hearted, half brocade
Under your noon-dimmed day watch,
Whose alcove we harbor in,
                                         whose waters are beaded and cold.

A journey's a fragment of Hell,
                                       one inch or a thousand miles.
   Darken our disbelief, dog our steps.
   Inset our eyesight,
   Radiance, loom and sting,
                                         whose ashes rise from the flames.

-- Charles Wright, from Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems © Macmillan, 2001.
H/T:  The Writers Almanac