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Talvikki Ansel

All dark, compost-dirt rich, the mink
ran over the snow, brown muzzle
leading its body to rodent holes.
It slid into the river, neat as an exhale,
under the pock-marked ice,
then out, dry-furred along the rocks.
Far out on the hill, someone skiing
broke a new trail in snow, called out:
just one more run, just one. Yellow tree light,
three-thirty, half the hill already dark.
Potatoes wrapped in foil soften in coals,
orange spheres, split. In the house
where we thought no one lived, a curtain
shifts, someone checking where the light was now.