Preparations for a Catskill Winter                                                            

She is never ready for the fact

of the land in winter. Blanket,

she thinks, and embers. But

the lexis falls short, no reason

to stop pinching weevils

from the honeysuckle vine.

Still, she remains for the certainties—

bantam old cat dragging a hare

twice its size down the barn

path, salting it away behind the

kitchen between rain gear and

mudboots, then turning sidewise       

to lick a bloodied paw.

Autumn hosanna draws her

uphill to the chicken yard

to praise the bundling shiver

and stony corn-scrabble trapped

in dust-wizened spurs.

Woodpile’s newly stacked by

lee-port to the house, the pungent

long ribbed vestibule listing ship-like

amid fading myrtle and viscid pine.

The only place we’re sailing,

she whispers, is into January.

Every year, she awaits a diacritic

point at which the velocity turns.

When poplar limbs tick upward

to appease the ebbing sun. And night

silences amplify, pierced only by

hardy songbirds and ribbon snakes

rustling through thornapple leaves

wind-lashed down to the squash beds.

Then it’s here, and she’s whole again,

standing naked in snow,

brushing teeth under a maple

braced in virgin ice, then spitting

out, smiling to the midnight crackle

of invisible coyote heaving through

the birch line in the upper twenty-five.

Xavier Review, Spring 2018