Resurrecting a neglected project...

I have not posted here nor on Sunday Morning Poems (a collaboration between myself, Lauren Leslie, and Nicole Hardina) in what seems like eons. 

But, here's a small thing, written in between checking things from both work and personal lists that never seem to become shorter.

It needs a title, which is not my forte and  never has been, but, it is still a sort-of poem...


6/20/2019

And when there is still, as the river-valley winds die,
haze scattering light across what's left
of snow, which clings like Dall sheep do
between peaks,
we call what breaks the treeline greens
and tundra rusts
fire. Somewhere south of us, it burns.
There, when by careless match or half-cigarette
or (disbelieve it?) lightning
strike, stillness is the beak of a boreal
woodpecker. Listen:
never more than three beats
at once, lest what we eat
discovers us, glossy black eye bent
close to dry bark, to crusted sap hardened amber,
which needs no match, no flicked ember
to set alight, within which we dream
(if ever the heat lets us sleep)
there are mosquitoes, gossamer
old wings containing old codices
of new life. And newness we crave wholly,
while the mountains trap thunderstorms,
and we wait
burning too, for a rain that smells
of snow.