Silent Light

It slanted, glittered like a knife-blade in the sun,
That light sloping down to bathe the ground with gold.
And at the edge of sight, the hills were lumpy with snow,
Mottled and botched with brown and white patching
Above which the clouds hung heavy and bowed, unmoving,
Their stolid grey spoke of heavy falls of snow.  And through
The silence of the air, the river churned and billowed, its
Sounds of breaking crystal shattering our ears.  Yet the sun
Was warm on our eyes and we felt drugged with the 
Power of the scene, a living christmas card glittering.  The
Trees rigid with cold, the sky expectant and the loch
Away to the right was frozen with white glass.  At our feet
The snow glistened in the grasses, one robin alighting on the frost
Like a splodge of blood.  It was enough, that silent light, to
Remind us of our frailty, our luck at the discovery of fire.

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