wood and snow

an afternoon walk through the nearby woodlot is filled with little images of the very earliest spring colour alongside the stark beauty of an april snowfall.

a relic
coming first from the south before a storm: the wind warm, we imagine
exotics driven in the evening clouds over unknown trees.





then the wind backing around to the northwest, with the wood-rot scent
of snow late in the season, i will hear the geese
overhead in the morning, again, as though they had lost their place,



circling in the heavy falling snow, the lake below eclipsed
by steam, the trees falling into their shadows,
the news always arriving, to be turned over as a relic
even though it seemed to be still happening, a voice coming to us



accounting the burst of azalea, while here, the geese
no longer of the numbers once recounted, continue to remember
as they recompose their flight, the snow sliding
from their bodies, following their one call, the slate
water glints, at the same time things moving together and apart.

james mccorkle