I
Gypsy clouds
in gypsy shades
cast their final shadows
across the snowy hillsides.
II
We set up the bivy
and notice that even now, at the very
bottom of winter, Williams' few yellow leaves
still shiver.
III
Time runs like melt-water
from a kind of god-glacier
toward a kind of god-river.
We take it in turns
to forage
twigs for the fire,
nothing more
than we need to cook our little spitting wieners.
The river flows everywhere,
my dear.
Listen. Hear
the waters gather and gather.
IV
The star-bright dark,
a beech tree swaying before the black.
An eye about to blink,
a tongue about to speak
its slow, deliberate music.
Had I known, I would have spent the week
planing planks
for a second (at least) ark.
Detail of a painting by my wife Anne-Marie