This Land is No-Man’s Land

a clarinetist crossing
the country by bus

gives his instrument
the window seat

locked in its case
dreaming of a sea of reeds

old ice dull as the eye
of a dead turtle

yellow stumps of alders
carved by yellow teeth

where waterlogged oaks
grow skirts of moss

and a thorn forest reclaims
an abandoned pasture

a school bus has graduated
it sports a satellite dish

encircled by the sighs
of half-dead pines

the musician’s fingers
grow restless on his lap

caught in the clarinet’s
clear net

Bad Faith Ritual

you rise and then what
whose hand will throw your stone

there’s a shape in the sand
that’s got your name on it

a cartoon heart perhaps
or half a castle

let’s snort the headlines
and see who sneezes first

play a game of hashtag
among lifeless bodies of evidence

and collect our empties
for deposit only

five cents for a jack boot
ten cents for a child’s shoe

twisting our tongues as she sells
spent shells by the seashore

i’m not waving but droning
unmanned and wired
to go off

January Blues

shadows on the snow
stretched out as if in prayer

the sound made by a spring
as ice smothers it

news that breaks and breaks
on slow snowshoes left right

here the urgent leaps
of a white-footed mouse

there a coyote pair
taking turns breaking trail

squirrels in heat
their labyrinthine urges

skeletal feathers of frost
where a vole is breathing

all just uphill from the interstate
a thing shown on maps

and a town in the mountains
taken over by mountains of snow

in every parking lot
another white peak

the pigeons rise
become a flock of rock doves

revolving in the blue
like a stuck tire

Chionophile

a connoisseur of oblivion
i begin with small omissions

goodbye to the twigs of my fingers
farewell to the far in my feet

my neglected face goes feral
till i’m lost in a forest of fur

closer and closer to the color of snow
as i grow colder

away from any furrow
burrowing into the twilight

catching flakes on my tongue
that taste like nothing else

*

Chionophiles are any organisms (animals, plants, fungi, etc.) that can thrive in cold winter conditions (the word is derived from the Greek word chion meaning “snow”, and -phile meaning “lover”). These animals have specialized adaptations that help them survive the harshest winters.
Wikipedia

Feast of the Epiphany

the snow has come you whisper
and I need to get naked

but what does that mean
six-sided and feather-light

or blank as a questionnaire
for the illiterate

it’s time to settle
into a down comforter

and begin to unsay
unnecessary things

for the snow comes
not to cover but to reveal

the woods i thought i knew
laid out like a banquet

Epiphany Eve

in the January silence
my camera’s shutter
makes me jump

the sun is bright on the boulders
grains of old snow
rain down

from acrobatic birches
and oaks stretched out like yogis

filling in the sky
over floors of lichen-
clad quartzite

i sit with my back against
a tall white pine
gazing at its companion

how the plates of bark interlock
their endless variations in shape

and the woodpecker wounds
that have bled
extravagant white rivers

a raven spots
my red cap as usual
and gives my position away

the sun threads a weft of cirrus
it’s Epiphany Eve

i find fresh feather-
coats of ice
on all the woodland pools

where the trees’
shrunken images
have turned jagged and Cubist

while their high drama goes on
even in their present absence

a red-tailed hawk
sails past emitting
its eagle scream

an oak with a massive rack of limbs
can offer
travelers a perch

or frame a view
of the next mountain

so much like this one
except it faces us

and suddenly i see
how a vista
can be a mirror

the kind we’ve always wanted
that keeps its distance

here among the trees
i am glad just
to be in this body

the day before
a forecast snowstorm
to walk forest roads

that lead nowhere in particular
and take their time

Vagrant

so what if the labile moon
becomes your emblem

the half-shell upon which
your camino is served up

sew it into the lining of a coat
for use in emergencies

a subway token for the underworld
or an owl’s limitless eye

stirring up the birds
in your bedroom tree

its screen will sell you nothing
in glowing detail

it claims one egg
from every clutch

it brings out your darkest shadow
once a month

The Hollow After Christmas

where a buck rubbed
the felt from his crown

fog drifts through the trees
without getting snagged

the day after Christmas
it’s not accurate to say the ground is bare

it hosts a 10-million-piece puzzle
of the fallen in brown and gray

a hickory nut still in its hull
is riding out the rain

like my last lost idea
nestled among roots

a red flourish of surveyor’s paint
flakes from a dead oak

while a power pole marked up by bears
is turning green

who knows what markings
might outlive us

stay too long in one place
and all the faces change

the once-vernal pools
now hold water year-round

which means we’re witnessing
the birth of a bog

it fattens on raindrops
each one a bull’s eye

the water seems murky
but it’s only the fog’s reflection

down below this cloud ceiling
a train blows its horn three times

instead of the usual six
i keep listening for the rest

my fingers grow cold
daylight begins to fade

shadows flit through the woods
heading for their roosts

at a crossroads of trails
traffic is light

just the clouds and me and then
just the clouds

Winter Bells

high above the town
a tree rests on a black stone of sap

like an exclamation mark
for a life sentence

or the old hearth and chimney
that i found yesterday

standing alone
deep in the state forest

we are confronted by the absent
the deciduous undead

drained of sap
immune to the provocations of sunlight

their pantomimes of desire
reduced to mere architecture

while stones dance
through freeze and thaw

all winter long now
rocking in their cradles of leaves

the day after the solstice
the sun reappears

in the dark ice-free end
of a woodland pool

for a long moment just after noon
amid the clamor of bells

The Elephant, Revisited

the elephant has left the room
disguised as many gray trees

this isn’t a political poem
missing elephants are everywhere

at the end of November
one needs a woolly coat

but there’s a certain slant of light
that induces mild euphoria

let’s all raise our arms
to summon an old flame

red crest of the good god bird
no ordinary peckerwood

cackling down at me
in my red checked cap

just before dusk a rifle booms
and i remember what moon this is

it looks so much less mammoth
once it escapes the trees