In small, murky ponds
that appear each spring
along the ridge crest,
dozens of wood frogs
float through the reflected treetops,
lust blatting from each fat throat.
Get too close and the show stops.
Another step and they vanish
into strings of bubbles.
It’s the first petrichor of spring—
that musk the soil gives off after rain,
strongest when long delayed.
So who wouldn’t choose
a day like today for dancing?
Side by side, cackling softly,
the two pileated woodpeckers
hitch their way down a tall locust tree
all the way to the ground.
The first greens
out of the ground are rockets:
dame’s-rocket, garlic mustard,
winter cress where it’s wet.
Then come the wild onions
up at the wood’s edge—
but not yet. I stand watching
a dark spot in the field that fails
to turn into a bear.
The bare ground seems
at first an oversight, then
a growing scandal—
all that anonymity stripped away,
the brown earth caught
without its papers,
and the pines like secret agents
sifting every seditious
whisper of the wind.
Each time I go out,
I interrupt something: a hawk’s meal,
a groundhog’s courtship.
I make an offering
of my gray hair—a fine
nesting material—
toss the cuttings out
onto the snow. The warm wind
blows them right back.
Slush: the mellifluous sound
the tires make
just before they start spinning.
Soft snow banks
are treacherous as Loreleis,
pulling the unwary driver in.
I steer gingerly with windows down,
listening to the welcome hiss
of leaves and mud.
Snow doesn’t stop falling
when it hits the ground;
it just slows down for a while.
It’s like that talk-show host
who ridiculed the idea
of a day-time moon—
how I relished his show’s
slow collapse, despite
its glut of glitterati.
First an opossum crawls into our bed.
He’s tame, you cry.
Those are just love-bites.
Then it’s a long-haired white cat,
purring and snuggling.
Get her out of here, you groan.
I wake to a heavy snowfall,
the old dog statue in the yard
just a bump under the blanket.
The spruce grove
at the top of the hollow
harbors a north-woods chill.
Seated on a runner sled
I hurtle down into
the sunlit field,
my shadow like a witching rod
stretched out before me,
alive to every bump and dip.
the bad penny
the wooden nickle & one
lousy dime
met up in
my pocket & tried
a trio gig
but as
you might expect
the penny kept returning
to the same tired riff
the nickle was dread-
fully flat
the dime couldn’t
keep time &
they all struggled
to make the changes
Opossum out at mid-day
on the glare ice
wipes its snout with its paws.
It’s digging through the crust
to reach food we’ve pitched—
old barbecue sauce, rotten cabbage—
inserting its head
as if through the shell
of a great white egg…
On a low mound in the woods,
two coyotes have left
overlapping turds—
like graffiti tags
made of mouse hair
and small bones.
I follow their tracks.
They diverge in an old clearcut
choked with tree-of-heaven.