fresh snow

a boil on the black birch looks good enough to lick

damp with snowmelt

the oak log’s colors are so bright I have to touch

on each numbered leaf in the study group

the 200-year-old white oak isn’t stirring

collects enough leaves to make its own woods

alive with color in between the cracks

trapped in the cross-hatch foliage new blue ice

caps the vernal pond it’s January

on the sandstone ridge we still stoop for baubles

the sassafras follows a crooked route to the sky

shadows of six-inch weeds stripe the stump

only a slight shimmy in the ferns’ reflections