Melting

Snow pockets the yard, thin slashes. The way its covering

disappears just after filling in all the edges. No one swoons

over slush. I want to bake cake, warm whiskey. Wrap in wool.

Scrape golden fruit raw, fired with cinnamon until the air

is autumn again, apples mounding under trees, orchard

buzzing, yellow jacket-billow crazy-drunk with juice.

My uncles piling the truck until the tarp is a mountain.

Cinched tight, they drive away and then cider comes—

glass jugs for the fridge, barrels for the cellar so we can store

sweetness under wraps for days like this when all the luster

disappears, dull moss fleck beneath dirty grey as if we are all

thick sheep and need a scoop of sun to get us through.

 * * * * *

Ice out

There is a spot at the top of the hill

past the barn on the paved road

where you first see the mountain—

rising slate blue in morning sun.

A dip Dad would call a hollow

rests below in rust or olive grey.

The trees have not leafed out

so, the contours of the land splay

against the sky and I always think

it looks like the lap of a woman,

the curve where joints meet bone.

I have come home to see my father,

winter fading from the land by spells.

He builds the fire in the stove each day.

We drive the curved roads in silence

until he says there is where he hunted

all that country, how his friend Bill

shot the biggest coyote he ever saw

just up on the ridge right there. I listen,

remember mornings with him walking

through the trees until he found a rock

to lean against, uncapped the thermos,

listened to his hounds bay off the granite

cliffs. On the way back, we see the ice

retreat from all the ponds, a slow seep

as if each water body floated a pale

moon saucer that gradually disappeared—

winter dissolving right before our eyes.