Spectrum in winter
January 7, 2002
Snow angels
have deepened into the banks,
fence posts darkened
where yesterday's warmth rose in them
from the buried ground.
Curved tines of grandfather's hay rake
make a shallow sketch in black, an archway
along a drift where fat sparrows alight -
the only movement.... All else
white and gray-toned:
frosted pines and sky, pillowed outbuildings,
our frozen route of footprints to the creekbed...
its shallow current now iced in breaking slivers
that point strangely upstream
all day through the field.