Time’s tide lifts up the winter clouds
To heaven’s higher reaches.
The sky spreads out, a giant sea,
With long and distant beaches.
Looking up, now we can see
How softer colors chalked
In greys and blacks with subtlety
Make seas to sail, beaches to walk.
Against the lovely, giant morn,
A small, fine galaxy
Of orange globes glows in the dawn,
Hung on a bare-twigged tree.
Grey sky and orange complement
And with the orange-gold
That San Francisco’s windows send,
Play us a song of old.
The lyrics say the world is fine,
More so in winter’s dawn
When this still beauty doth remind
We sunbathe on God’s lawn.