WINTER TRAILMAKING IN MT WASHINGTON VALLEY
It’s the next thing to walking on water,
Sinking snowshoes into drifts
Of down almost out of sight,
Lifting webbed feet easier than
We thought but effortfully, white
Ashes floating up like smoke,
To take the next giant step
On immaculate virgin territory.
This cold day we see no mouse prints,
No trails of birdclaws like the tracings
Of sandpipers playing tag with the tide,
Only dents of icy missiles
Windblasted into marble quilts.
But look. A raven evicted from pipe-frozen
Flats above the treeline takes
Lodging in a topless cage
Of bare branches, querying us
With raucous uncrowlike challenges.
And by that wall a small red squirrel
With straggly tail munches a pineseed
Until we shift a pole and he
Submerges into the briarpatch,
Rockets up a hemlock and turbo-
Drives across arboreal highways
As silently as the beech leaves
Flutter and scatter across the snow
Onto our cross-stitched calling cards.
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