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