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ENTRANCE Pause at a rise in the muddy trail. No sound. The new leaves don’t move. Don’t look. See. Don’t listen. Hear. The woods flow like warm rain into old snow. Breathe in what you need. PICKING WILD BLUEBERRIES I know I must finish before the pebble rattles start in the trees. There is more fruit on the branches closest to the clearing because there is less shelter for the birds. I see gray and white ones waiting for me to finish: “Wisaakegjak.” “Whiskey Jacks,” say the French who buy our pemmican. Some day you will call them “Canada Jays.” HOLDOUT After the embers from the fire die to a glowing pile, a last blade of flame might snap up, for a minute or two, light the dark room again. So too the scrawny, bent maple lost all summer by the creek hangs on to its leaves after days of cold rain. Other leaves down, already compost. Maple still flares pure gold warms up one corner of this dim, abbreviated day. This stanza should be cheery or at least hopeful, but it’s not. Those leaves will fall. It’s going to snow, and you’ll sit there and watch the dying coals make faces at you until they go out. ROOST At dusk, a few crows circle over the river. Others join them and the soaring spiral expands, like they are holding a place in the sky. They are like words in search of a poem no one wants to write. Then the leader heads straight for the roost and the spiral unwinds, and the black book goes back on the shelf for the night, unread. THRIFT SHOP I'm going through the rack of men's trousers in the musty basement alongside a tall, skinny guy I don't want to look at twice, but he starts to talk: “Everything in here’s a 42 or XX large. Some fat guy musta died last week.” Just then, I find a nice pair of corduroys – 36 waist too long, but I have a friend who can hem. I don't try them on, just pay the $3 and get out. I know I won’t care who I'm wearing on the white carpet of snow already unrolling under all those cold stars. CLOSING TIME Last night, smoke, steak and wine. Up late – endless talk about right women and wrong women This morning it’s clear and cold. You cover the pontoon boat while I watch warblers blow away over the pond like yellow leaves. In my hand, any one of them would be warmer than that bottle left out by the empty chairs and the dead fire. It’s half-full, but no one is in a hurry to take it into the house. WINTER NEWS Should I bring you flowers – winter bouquets, porcelain petals glazed with ice? You have a warm place, a pink rug, a rocking chair. Below us, tires scream, people hurry by, wrapped tight in their destinations. All over, snow blowing, breaking the rooftops into impossible black and white. ALL NIGHT SUMMER STORMS Chase each other like huge black cats, electric paws feeling for church steeples, clawing lonely trees. You too, woman asleep beside me, know how they prowl all night and disappear come morning. END OF A HOT DAY At 3 a.m. the dogs start barking. Birds lower their wings, close their beaks. The apartment still roars with the artillery of air conditioners but the fronts have shifted. I think of you frozen on our bed, dreams condensing gentle and distant as tomorrow’s clouds. ANOTHER FOREST Your feet feel down the sandy paths where cut-up moonlight seeps through unpruned branches. Stop, you are surrounded by sounds not from wind or leaves. Worlds of insects crackle with unsteady life. Fox, rabbit, snake, owl all going their ways. BARRED OWL Swoops into the crest of the big cottonwood by the creek, but can’t escape the mob of crows at his heels. So he sits tight like a fat banker – tongue-tied, twisting to watch all ways at once while the James Gang tugs his watch chain, turns his pockets inside out. HERON ON ROCK – SNOW Young egret poised on rip-rap river bank under concrete pylons of freeway bridge. Too far north in November. Insects, lizards and frogs – food freezing over almost as I watch, wish, for once, for flight. OPEN HOUSE In November, the forest feels downhearted. Someone left all the doors and windows open! Fall is in foreclosure: the heat has been turned off, the light evicted, leaves fallen like fading “for sale” signs. Some tenants won’t move. Juncos and sparrows pick off weed seeds. One robin brightens a hackberry. I sit alone on a stone bench. The old hermit, Han Shan, sits down with me. We scribble poems on dead leaves. BEFORE ICE OVER At dusk, one by one, hundreds of gulls fall out of the leaden sky onto the lake, already beginning to close its lid for winter. We call them by their names, recognize bill color, molt, age, species – see everything but living beings – finding their spots for the night, calling out to kin, to neighbors. Afloat on freezing waves, they turn together into the north wind. While, on shore, wrapped in down coats, hats and gloves, we strain to see every last one in the failing light, like it was some miracle. CANOES IN JANUARY Tipped over, summer and fall spilled out, winter moved into aluminum long houses for Lakota ghosts. Hulls still point at the lake like compass needles point at true loss. PRAIRIE GRASS – FEBRUARY Almost touching the snow banks, the thin stalks are bent down like old women, walking home from a country market, empty early. They are holding just a handful of seeds – shopping baskets full of wind.
