Like varicose veins
in the thinning snow, the dark
tunnels of the voles.
My garbage is nothing
but coffee grounds, each morning
wrapped in its filter-shroud.
I miss summer:
those small millipedes that glide
across the bathroom floor.
Secondary school
I grew up with a woodstove
instead of a TV. I know all
the theme songs of oak.
If I could unlearn
the names of the birds,
how much freer their flight!
In a dream, I run
through my half-remembered high school
to catch a bus.
Rabid
The gray fox sat
and gazed at us like an angel—
one that foamed at the mouth.
I refuse to write
another poem about
the goddamn crows.
Holding a rifle
is like holding an infant,
wary of setting it off.
Snow plow
Our neighbor plows
down-hollow and back,
his wife riding shotgun.
The old plow truck hasn’t left
the mountain in years,
bound to its one road.
In each yard,
it raises white ramparts
from the fallen enemy.
Breaking through
Fresh holes gape in a maple trunk,
as if from some Roman
soldier’s lance.
The new, smooth ground of ice and sleet
hasn’t quite set;
I keep breaking through.
Cardinals peck at the plowed road,
gathering faux teeth
for their reliquaries.
Miner
Opossum out at mid-day
on the glare ice
wipes its snout with its paws.
It’s digging through the crust
to reach food we’ve pitched—
old barbecue sauce, rotten cabbage—
inserting its head
as if through the shell
of a great white egg…
Bark Ode
for Gary Barwin
It’s only in strong sun
that the winter woods resemble
a bar-coded label.
Today is gray.
I pause to stroke the bark
of a diseased chestnut oak,
ridges kinked and folded,
ordinarily straight lines
impossible to read.
Snowfall
The slow and steady
accumulation of snow
making everything strange
reminds me of my father
reading aloud to the family
from a book in his lap,
the whisper of pages turning,
each of us building a picture
all our own.
Pastoral
The squirrel’s tracks end
in a smudge of blood on the snow,
one tuft of fur
and the long furrow
its dangling tail drew
beside the fox’s footprints.
Alone in the field,
a bulldozer lowers its blade
to a white and heavy harvest.
Sledding
The spruce grove
at the top of the hollow
harbors a north-woods chill.
Seated on a runner sled
I hurtle down into
the sunlit field,
my shadow like a witching rod
stretched out before me,
alive to every bump and dip.