1.

Spring
in the subtlest colours of winter:

faint pink of maple,
golden tinge of birch,

yet spruce almost black
against the whitest greys.

We wake to a field mouse,
soft brown fur and clean white belly.

I could skin the whole family,
stitch pretty mittens.



2.

The coyotes are coming down from the mountains
where the hunting has grown thin.

They set the valley dogs to barking, hard monotones
like stones the size for throwing.

Last year they got the cats, fattened
on a daily breakfast of birds. Their ambush

devised, practised, refined.
The clever executions: 

hard shakes, snapped necks.
A quick dispatch, and clean.

3.

Slow sap drawn
into a single stem,

a November rose opens
to the wan sun.

How much nobler, it seems,
than summer’s easy profusions

whose fresh petals fell,
filling our hands. Still,

you think I should want more
than just this.



4 ...