fallow ground risen
on stilts of ice
how fun to crunch
in new winter boots
through a snow squall
the sun’s inflorescent glow
drawing me on with its
mirage of comfort
to find that fabled spot
out of the wind
Fallow
The Idea of Wallace Stevens in Plummer’s Hollow
reading in the woods
book open to the sky
wandering snowflakes
vanish into the text
which is after all
mostly white space
something like a cloud
downloading more cloud
a woodpecker taps
a dead tree creaks in the wind
a hunter’s trail camera
wears a cap of snow
i practice solitude
one day at a time
for how in the holy
hell of other people
could grief still surface
its ancient ice
where in the limbo
of this floating world
could a bear blank as death
still find footing
how in god’s name
is anyone not yet numb
i close the book to preserve
its idea of order
from all these freelance
asterisks and daggers
untamed annotation leading
nowhere but here
Sacerdotal
the maple with a double helix
of poison ivy succubi
its branches that are not its branches
just as naked now
the beech with a hidden hollow
hoarding meltwater
skinny stalks in the meadow
fern tangles reduced to ribs
winter makes it easy to see
and miss the missing
*
but trees can shine
in an icy blue depth of sky
and church bells from town
remind me it’s sunday
so i walk among ridgetop oaks
as if through a cathedral
who can resist a bit
of sabbath-day LARPing
to my usual seat
on a stack of flat rocks
cue a coyote trotting in
from the other direction
who stops 50 feet away
and gazes past me
flag of breath curling up
into the sunlight
and takes a few more steps
as i reach for my phone
a flash of sun from
the reflective case
and coyote is disappearing down-ridge
tail streaming behind
a lapse in faith
i instantly regret
my consumer’s impulse to capture
to have and to hold
whatever sacrament may exist
apart from the encounter itself
i think of those who will never
see a carnivore in the wild
or walk in a true forest
or visit the ocean
too poor or too much
in the middle of things
either way a poverty
that should appall us
*
i finish my tea
begin to feel a kind of warmth
a split in the heartwood
of an old black cherry tree
opens with a ratchety cry
wound like a sideways mouth
taking all
the wind’s calls
no room for piety in this hymnal
the earth has teeth
Weather Report
it’s january just by the light
and the emptiness of the forest
with so few birds or insects
what’s left to hum or buzz
unfrozen earth under my boots
still has a bit of give
one day i’m in the fog
translucent and vague
the next day it’s wind
obsessively turning pages
fog lends the moss
a certain radiance
i step on it as if sinking
into the lushest life
wind brings percussion
to the treetops
creaking and clacking except
in the heart of the spruce grove
where a woodpecker taps
to the end of a limb and flies off
fog may make me
a better listener
but the wind shows me
how to breathe
from that still and empty place
deep within
On the Ownership of Mountains
We have our own private mountains, but are they already too tired from waiting for us?
Etel Adnan
a break in the rain
itself a break in the snow
i take a chance on a walk
on my own mountain
the one i live on but also
the one that lives in my head
without their leaves
and most of their birds
the moss-footed trees
couldn’t be quieter
where snow lay until yesterday
the forest floor glistens
the sun is a bright wound
that soon heals over
two ravens converse
from the tops of adjacent trees
croaking high and low
they fly off into the clouds
then the fluting of a goose
with 27 followers
so low over the trees i swear
i feel the breeze from their wings
the tiredness drains
from my legs as i walk
i’m stopped by gnarled
skeletons of mountain laurel
one still clinging
to a fallen oak leaf
what is this blight
where are the snows of yesteryear
i pass a hollow tree just in time
to see its resident porcupine
tail like a spiny piñata
disappearing up inside
below on the road a fresh litter
of chewed-off hemlock twigs
the creek is high but clear
boisterous but well-behaved
yesterday’s ice already seems
as far-fetched as a dream
but how is it that even in winter
a mountain can give clean water
to the mink and muskrats downstream
the heron and trout
a forest grows fitter as it ages
better at filtering water
better at storing carbon
even in steep mountain soil
so the oaks as they sleep
are making fresh compost
growing the mountain
they grow on
attentive in a way that i
alleged part owner could never be
whose woods these really are
i think i know
a land trust oversees their right
not to be destroyed
but the mountain belongs
as all mountains do to the moon
earth’s own private mountain
alive only in our oceanic bodies
which are made for walking
for circling like pilgrims or scavengers
for going from full to dark
to full again
Thaw
with every step a bird
takes in the snow
there’s another arrow
pointing backwards
the snow sprouts four
small gray feathers
as it shrinks in the sun
other things appear
fallen fox grapes
a bluebird hawking gnats
five small forest pools
at the head of the hollow
where reflections are still
a bit blurry
In-Between Time
flat white ground
matching the sky
and the trees and whatnot in between
seeming to float
i get vertigo on a mountainside
blank as an unfilled-out form
anchor myself by looking at bare leaves
in the shape of a sleeping deer
any fallen seed or leaf now
becomes a botanical specimen
i look up from the page in time
to see a vole slipping back under
its dark pelt doesn’t stop moving
even for an instant
hypertension or flow state
or maybe a bit of both
the distant limestone quarry’s
giant steps
bring us no closer either
to the ground or the sky
Winter storm thoughts
It’s below zero Fahrenheit with a howling wind just two nights past the longest of the year. The juniper tree I planted next to the house thumps against the eaves. In my youth I’d be living it up, blasting the stereo while getting roaring drunk and feeding wood to a stove some visitors once dubbed Ol’ Sparky. Now I am apparently grown old, it’s sit hunched over a keypad and worry about what to do if the power goes out.
Every winter I vow to winterize this old plank-wall farmhouse. Every summer, foolish woodrat, I forget. I blame Janus, that two-faced bastard. Resolutions aren’t solutions.
*
Just about every decade, I re-read the Norse sagas, I’m not sure why. It’s hard to look away from their grimy brutality and insights into human and inhuman character. Today: Eyrbyggja Saga. I’d remembered it had some horror elements but had forgotten just how many walking dead there were—holy hell. It’s the world’s first folk horror novel! Complete with a haunted cow.
Thanksgiving Fisher
all around the great dead oak
as darkness falls
a fisher dances
hunting white-footed mice
a dark sine curve
against the snow
that is also somehow able
to freeze for long minutes
crouching pouncing
coming up empty
it is only i sitting across
the frozen pond
who leaves feeling
fuller than before
filled i suppose with seasonally
appropriate gratitude
for this beautiful small beast
with its wild blood-lust
for my encounter with it
once in a new moon
for the freedom it still enjoys
to disappear
Reflection
burning some old barn
beams for fuel
the 19th-century knots
pop like pistols
and my train of thought
goes off the rails
forlornly blowing
its figurative whistle
into a night bright
with fallen snow
we’re all fugitives
from the present moment
in our distracted states
of america
no wonder it takes gunshots
to wake us up
i hear footsteps
in the kitchen
and find myself
in the bathroom mirror
happy to dwell
in this icy stillness
it’s the future
i’d like to escape
a choose-your-own-
doom story
we picture as a shining city
on a hill which once
might have been more
like a mountain