White sky in the last light.
Imminence of trees.
Pale birch-clumps amid gray trunks of pine.

Black branchings on the white
remoteness. Tracework.
Visible clusterings, division of leaves.

Pale page of emptiness
on which some hand had scribbled
a message in impenetrable code—

for years he pondered it:
how to retrieve it,
how to redeem that last hope and despair.

—Frederick Morgan