Incongruous

Incongruous A fox trots in fine lines through the pencil sketch forest to pause at tree here, stump there, its movements precise or holy it marks the roots in an ochre light like a musky saint…

Incongruous A fox trots in fine lines through the pencil sketch forest to pause at tree here, stump there, its movements precise or holy it marks the roots in an ochre light like a musky saint…

Threshold For Margaret When the sunrise spread blooms across the snow and painted the window in almost spring you fingered the stories looped round your neck, strung up like pearls or teeth, depending each moment…

Unapologetic The porcupine swishsteps across the road to saunter with unexpected grace up the steep and snowy bank leaving a trail like a zipper or a creek that’s left its bed eager to…

Disguise For a moment, the mountain flushed with color, even though it was winterand noon on a cloudless day as if perhaps it had tugged at the quilted sky with scree-sloped arms, pulling it upand over a rocky chin so…

Unbridled As the sky grows stars over settling snow the forests move in eyeshine and tail, pressing padded feet beneath gazing owl and curtaining fade of coyote call claiming the meadow as lynx, four in all, lope and…

Cohesion The day we removed the cadaver’s heart, tugging it freefrom its taproot vessels and lung-lined bed, it filled both handswith an earthen weight: carnal, and still. My heart beat wildly, nearby, as I opened it,directed to trace the map…

Spectral All day the clouds crept about in watery clothes, draping the ridgelines in steam and snow coating each tree with their foggy weight leaving them ghosted, unrecognizable, stalled by a slow mist between black and white.…

For Mary Oliver The alder twig skidded to a stop on a hoar frosted slope wearing winter bird cones — ruffled, feather thick — a delivery just as surprising and indelible as a sudden flash of wings…

Arms When you lift the young pup — blind, burrowing all belly — it settles like a child in the pool of your arms, stilling oblivious to the humming rush that races along your spine, a dusty…

Winter Winter has pulled its cap over the sky freezing in edges wrapping your ridge lines in rime and firn an icy and delicate hand that sometimes, like you, cracks open. Look there, along your…