Late December

Solstice passed,
a turning toward the light,
yes, surely, despite the heavy,
frozen air this morning--
exhaust gases ghost dance as
traffic on Route 9 slows for the bus.

I look east, at the slight sliver of
warm light edging the clouds
over the Taconics and Berkshires.
The low hills are a sleeping woman,
on her side, soft curves
under rumpled blankets.
That supine form, her landscape of curves
rising from the plain of her warm bed.
“Spoonful” plays, and Jack sings
Some of them cries about it…
some of them dies about it…
and Eric’s woman tone answers,
the electric shaman channeling his siren
through wood and steel, maybe the oldest
moan of all.

Somewhere, she sleeps,
hills low on the horizon,
telescoped to me through the low morning
light leaping, magnified, like last night’s
three-quarter moon—
waxing or waning, can’t be sure.

Apple trees, closer, just off the road, in neat rows,
evenly spaced by a careful eye.
Fruit, leaves gone, their bare trunks
and branches in tortuous, serpentine shapes
in the cold, dry air—waiting out the winter
and the sun’s low arc.

And what of shifting seasons?
Utterly fruitless or simply fallow?
I can still taste the summer, that
Honeycrisp in my gloved hand.
Is that enough?