The reedy knife-edged clouds, spatter A benign snowfall; a storm moves Menacingly slow above the mountain. At a glance you grasp peace, power And ferocity simultaneously. After Dawn on the rise, white frost paints Dun-colored sedge, to expose elk tracks And bear scat as I trace an old Samish Path to flatter terrain. A field develops Into meadow upon meadow and stretches Outward to an uphill incline of apple And cherry orchards—trees bare skeletons, Begging to be covered in an eiderdown Of white. In a *terroir* part sand and gravel, I stand among ancient stones like cobbles Tossed by gods unknown into the old river Bed, soil like sand, in between dried moss, An archeology of a defeated archipelago. Where have the beavers gone, the pelts That made mountain men wealthy, weary, Yet terrifying? Where are the branch bridges? And damn constructs of animals so practiced They never spoke, only barked to one another? The black deer tracks lay bare in ice forms And shadows among scruffy and untidy, Buttery maples lean anxiously across water; Gone is the penetrating golden light That gleams on the stream, shriveled And shrived through in which the torpid fish Still swim. Left are ripples, eddying dead leaves— Cottonwoods, aspens and alders now naked, Not even a promise of warmth in the darling Crimson dogwood. I cut my gaze And the cinches tethering the bodies The oldest horse at the edge of the field That borders a railroad won’t return To her stall until an old patriarch who Rode her for two decades takes the reins Himself, speaking to her in soft Romani. Some beasts conceal fear better than others. The last time he fetched this one, he feared She knew somehow he’d tried to sell her. He failed to get the price sought, so returned Her to fields where she paws the wildflowers. In the lateness of the day in the makeshift Courtyard of an encampment, the old Man watches ravens plummet between Rows of hickory and oak trees, cawing Angrily, as if Elijah refused their bread. As he descends the field now, he fades For a moment into the shadows of trees, Holding his hat against the rising wind. The sun inches westward beyond a shoal Of storms as his wife emerges from the house. She steadies a chipped decanter that holds Fistfuls of daisies picked from the field Ravens now halo between the tridents Of distant lightning, a sky under which Horses, like dark fire, are circling. ***