The Village

Sky blankets the fields all the way to the mountains,and the mountains stand with their shadows.Dimming hours frost the orchards, so that each fruit wears a sheen,and branches grow thick with snow.A deer outside my window noses through the bushes,and finding nothing, squints its eyes into a windthat blows powder into air and acrossthe road, marbled with ice.I see trails of smoke rise from the village, now clean,where little shops keep teakettles whistling on wood stoves.The steam softens the butcher's cough as he wraps unsold cuts of beef.Outside his door, oxtails packed in snow. Pale like stars, the bones glitter.Every night the women who powder their facespour drinks for men with gold around their wrists or fingers.More snow tumbles down the widow's house, where one bowl of rice is eaten, another onewarm under a blanket for a man who can't return.Water freezes in the pipes of the village's one shaman, and insideher shrine room, the doll's eyes glaze open.Her dog, tied to a wooden stake, circles outside.The woods hushed, and beyond thema red and green temple turns white.The monks sit. Silence, a mist of breath, isso cold the door to my house freezes shut.