Brown beer bottle clots
spot Winter’s arterial ditches;
He coughs up litter –
golden bow from a Christmas wreath,
a decaying newspaper fat with ads.
A dead deer is suspended in the cold water
at the edge of the forest, glassy eyed –
a Russian Tsar, preserved;
Winter clings to the brown land, a lover scorned, shameless.
He will do anything, his snowy arms
lace the trunks of the trees like ragged tutus –
the trees look away in the wind.
Though April came late, unapologetic,
wooing the frozen dirt with wild tales of green, of crocuses,
of robins pulling fat worms like a sewing machine in slow reverse,
Earth relents
and Winter folds its losing hand,
the ice along the side of the roads sliding like cards
into the frigid black water.
Halfway North 