not so much a season
as a lack. The maple sap burns low,
unfanned. Pondwater,
ice-blown, retreats to a corner. The plowed drive’s shoe-string
drops on a half-sketched map,
dirty, untied. A rabbit-crossing
hops to the other side–
soft fold in the paper, blurring. Movement I can’t quite catch:
the fourth deer
of the afternoon, bounding away. Where does she bed? There is
no shelter, only trunks too thin
themselves to stop a wind, their colored leaves
long swept off, or scrubbed,
or whittled. One faded splinter
rattles from a twig like a cough.
Even winter’s used up– no bright fierceness, no falling snow.
An icicle drips
in watered-whiskey sunlight, the heart tips south like a tin cup.
