Temporary Earth

Winter comes with the evening grosbeak

not snow.

It's still a metal country: wherever roads

go, and wires, to the brown brushwood haze,

the earth is splashed flame on the pick-ups,

dead hunting dogs bleed on the shoulders.

As the woods clear,

I can see the motel where I first stayed from my window,

a brick by day, a well-lit truck by night.

But the forked pine dances: two dervishes

in a suit of small rusty bells;

and the wind sails amazing blue slate around the sky

into the abrupt mountains,

and late, at a country cottage,

as we shiver to our cars, the pines and wires

run away suddenly, leaving

our faces open as hands

the whole cup of the stars.