I did nothing until I was ready—
my terra firma snagged in sky.
Birds arguing over road signs.

What does it look like from here?
Damp-leaved early December slick
in the lap of eternal freethinking.

The moment those firths let go
their river hands, is the moment
I turn translucent beneath the giant

copper beech. You, mountain
up which I swam loam-faithed
and bubbling, listen: you made me

breath by breath, you showed me
the orchid’s lip for crying out loud,
you laid out your vertigo glamour

and invited me to kneel at your skirt
and offered a ladder to the catwalk
of your lashes, winter I could not see

to see threatening as a threshold.
 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 1.

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As usual, I hardly felt the cold, or I felt it
as I felt my own tongue in my mouth—

gratefully. Freezing quiets the mind. I had never
been so calm. I lay on my back, head

cradled in brown leaves, ears filling with snow,
like the sateen deer who nest at night

in their oval earth beds, and I was in love
with everything I saw—bud scale and birch

bark, fan-shaped twigs, the long blue shadows
stretching over snow, and—then the letting go—

some of the Berkshires looked like vertebrae
and it was comforting to sleep on them.
 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 4.

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