Cold Snap

Smoke from a late fire
smothers the sunrise
under a cranberry harvest;
smells of campfire puffs
on a corduroy brush jacket.

Irrigation ditches aflame
with seeded asparagus,
lick the last from puddle
mud and roll to sleep
under hoary grass.

Two years since that October
and here we are again, me
sitting at your feet trying
to tell you my life in Spanish,
laughing. You’ve been away
and I am out of practice.

As I stand to go, I read the poem
engraved in your granite
headstone and paper leaves swirl
around my feet on a breath
colder than glitter flakes
and black star voids.

Snowdrifts

There’s an unrest in the way
snow reflects the moon tonight,
as though it waits for the whorl,
the deep sweep down the canyon
pushing white carpet into tumbled trips.

Aspen have shivered off
the last of sun-denied color
and the thrust of naked limbs
bears the weight of cratered light.

A whitetail nudges her weary
fawn under a yawn of winter-frocked
pine boughs, ears northward,
eyes skyward, watching the Hunter
notch a diamond-tip.

The nose of night
smells mercury dropping
long before the Rockies speak
a whisper that will be wind.

merciless winter

snow is bitter, even
though it glitters
like silver pennies
in blinding sunlight.

there’s just enough
heat to melt a razor layer
that stabs when broken
not yet enough to absolve
completely.

nothing is beautiful
about this nature.
ice laces the edge
of transparent wings,
there is no reincarnation,
and dragonflies freeze easily.

lingering impressions

I want to trace
the lines in your palm
to where your life
tangles with mine
and mingle for eternity,

smooth with my thumb
the crease in your brow
shadowed by the years
of shared passing,

touch with my lips
the echoes of laughter
etched on your cheek
and flecked in the sun
of your eyes,

open my hand
inside a lazy stream
and catch the ripple
of a dragonfly stealing a kiss
off the face of forever.

cold feet

the fire is warm
but my fingertips have yet to find
assurance in heat
and though I entreat my toes
to stretch toward flame,
they settle for the solace
of neither bite nor burn