First Snow

A rabbit has stopped on the gravel driveway:

imbibing the silence,

you stare at spruce needles:

there's no sound of a leaf blower,

no sign of a black bear;

a few weeks ago, a buck scraped his rack

against an aspen trunk;

a carpenter scribed a plank along a curved stone wall.

You only spot the rabbit's ears and tail:

when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel,

but when it stops, it blends in again;

the world of being is like this gravel:

you think you own a car, a house,

this blue-zigzagged shirt, but you just borrow these things.

Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams

and stood at Gibraltar,

but you possess nothing.

Snow melts into a pool of clear water;

and, in this stillness,

starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze.

Source: Sight Lines (2019)