Under the pine trees and the snow,

black on white, and row on row,

we leave our sisters when they go.

We age and die, we fill our space

and no one younger takes our place.

What a mysterious thing is grace

that makes us willing to be gone,

forgotten in our soundless lawn,

even the Order passing on.

Whatever good we might have done

is like the prints where foxes run,

lost when the snow melts in the sun.

But what we’ve learned above the ground

is to love silence more than sound,

white more than any color found.

The work of all our lifetime lets

us look on death with no regrets:

We vanish as the snow forgets.

—Gail White