morning fire

January 1 - January 4 Week 51/72

how is it that skin can foretell a coming snow

and a nose can predict just how soon it will arrive?

the morning light bears witness to these truths

with a thin frosting of granular snow

balancing on branches and dusting the ground

with a magical powder revealing the usually

invisible trails of predawn excursions

I delight in following lines of little tracks

here, there and back again

taking care not to erase these visible memories

with the deep treads of my boots until the sun

crests the hill encouraging me to light

a fire in the earthen chiminea and sit watching

rays of sunlight play on the chilled landscape

as the rasping quack, quack, quack

of four mallards drifts over the lake on

dark ribbons of unfrozen water canals