Yonder

When the last rifle-shots of the season ring outacross the river—swollen thick with rain and mud,moving forward as everything must—snow glistens along the bank's dark crownand you understand nothing changes down here:not the smell of wood smoke or January's damp air,the top-heavy sky working its way overhead.It's a new year, and by now you know betterthan to make resolutions, though you wishyou could move like those gold-rimmed clouds, your bodyhalf a heaven, drifting someplace easier.It's almost enough to linger on the porch this eveningimagining the wind up there, the rafters of starshidden behind all that blue. You would wadethe blushed horizon, disappear across sun-struck hills.You would ferry this light from one world to the next.