The Night Sky
Richardson Homestead
In Memory of John and Jo Haines
1.
From the window of the cabin he built
using the wide planks of an old bridge,
they watched the light narrow, day
after day, until another long winter arrived
and hunger sat between them at the table,
like an uninvited guest who refuses to leave,
until their nerves rattled like chains
and the last fat disappeared from the pot.
He waited for good news to arrive in the mail.
She painted birds on small pieces of bark.
Wearing her bright red hat, the one I saw
in a photograph, she was the first to leave.
He could be as cold as ice, indifferent.
A couple from Fairbanks bought the place.
2.
The last time I stopped, what remained of the cover
of their old greenhouse was flapping in the wind
like the sail of a Viking longship arrived to carry
their lingering spirits over Banner Dome,
over the blood-red tundra they knew so well,
over the ghosts of the ancient Dorset people,
over the vanishing polar ice and into the star-
timbered shaft we know as myth where Odin
waits with a raven sitting on each shoulder
while the poet Bragi plucks a harp made of stone.
Black-Capped Chickadee
A black-capped chickadee rises from October’s tall grass
its feathers gray as the cold fog beginning to lift after three days.
From the ridge where I’m walking, I can see the homeless camp below.
Paper Birch
Oldest of all the trees in our yard,
it was a spindly sapling on that snowy
day when we moved in many years ago.
Now it’s a candelabra for the stars
when winter nights are long and deep.
When the days begin to lengthen, leaves
appear overnight, or so it always seems.
October’s gold drifts down while we sleep.
Christmas Wolves
Close enough to the city that we could hear
traffic, three wolves, motionless, like stone,
watched as we entered a small clearing.
The largest, the color of frost, was flanked
by the others so they could easily close
on us or vanish into the woods. They didn’t
move as they watched us hurry away. “Don’t
tell anyone,” my wife whispered, “not a soul.”
Rime Ice
If angels exist, even the imaginary kind,
I imagine they’d come down on a night
such as this when everything’s covered
with rime: those glowing lanterns
I saw hanging from a mountain ash,
the antenna on my neighbor’s roof.
They’d hold their great wings wide,
feathered with light, lighter than rime.
Making Applesauce on a Snowy Afternoon
Who was first to bring the scent of simmering
apples sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar
together? Could it have been Adam and Eve
in their cold hut outside the Gates of Eden?
Was it the serpent trying to make amends?
Let the snow fall and the cold wind blow
until all the kitchen windows disappear.
My applesauce is simmering on the stove.
Common Merganser on a Winter Morning
The merganser, with the iridescent-green head
and orange beak that reminded me of the orange
I hoped to find at the bottom of my Christmas stocking
when I was a boy should have migrated to open water
when the lagoon began to freeze. Yesterday it was still
diving in a small iris of swiftly moving water.
Would I have felt this way when I was young?
Its underbody was as white as new snow.
Snow Squall
At dusk, a feint, a swirl of flakes, before
the wind quickened and the squall arrived,
a great white bear slipping one paw through
a slightly open window, while its other paw
tried the door before retreating with a hiss.
When the wind eased, we opened the door.
It was now a boat being rowed to the west.
Star...