Bestiary

First Snow

73 First Snow As if released, at last, into light sleep, the dozing off, the stillness of the earth, the hush, the fall, surrendering the soul: first snow transfigures the November woods with its brush-off, its hide-and-seek, just-born then-gone. A tree-stand, once shuttered by leaves, now visible, towers. Two hounds, without their master, sniff frozen terrain. An antlered stag hooves cloven tracks: in his wake, a crossbow of branches. The tumbled trunk. A gunshot ricochets. The intermission of day. While trees, dark ghosts beyond the clearing, slumber. ...