Poetry:

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NARRATION

no one had overnighted at the farmstead
in some long time and no one known a winter
from its window in longer

he that owned and
did not live on it kept a granary and
machinery there and rode to mow the yard

a neat green acreage and harboring woods
for no one but a redtail hawk to look at
and one man only to visit

and the grass
got thick and hung with web this canicular
time but the mower will come or a sickle

TEN AND ELEVEN MARCH

admonition of blow ice
               finger and pillow drifting
radio to machine traveler two days ago and
now a tongue of darkening not at but out from the half-
snow-plugged sewer-drain mouth on the white lot of the river
                                           open
stretch below the dam not to do with a return
to warm or any change and no mallards around it or
in it
                on the tail of the cold maybe
                tundra breeding
                                next day
the tongue all water a dead-leaf-tinted pooling at the
nonhatchery bank a wind hint of everything in
cycle one more time one more tired try again yet an
old mind’s content in another turning of finity

ALTWEIBERSOMMER

cottonwood leaves had been tardy to turn and drop
and spill on the track but were golden there now and
few of any other remained to hang or not

fewer old wives sat out in demonstration of
a name that no man awaiting in the valley
had given the time to celebrate or mock it

a gravel drive below the naked oak ridge held
sun for one more cricket and one more day moth but
a porch would have had to be on that white new house

the Sheyenne had gone without saying but river
and valley kept them in a word and their blood ran
into another name for the weather delay