The light this morning comes as a surprise,
in rays of gold both young and warm, oblique
into the plants, the trees, my weary eyes,
in shafts of color strong as I am weak.

A flashlight held beneath a camper’s chin,
that eeries features with its upward beam,
is like this lighting of the planet’s skin
when morning angles at a low extreme.

It picks out snail adherents on the spears
and leaves of bushes, sucking green to lace.
It penetrates the shadows and it peers
into the darkest coolest underspace
my garden has, and there it starts to warm
the hailstones left behind by last night’s storm.