Still Life
          for A.M.D.

          (December—Braham, Minnesota)

The first thing morning
does is eye up the pieces, rearranges
what nighttime has displaced;

puts the deer back in its
cupboard, flushes the rooster
pheasant;

who leaves its warm scent
and sprinter’s proclivity minted
in glittering wing-prints at the
end of its run;

cracking-open the fragile cold
with its wing-beaten cackle, steering
nimbly through the year’s
silent part;

alighting just short of its
fence-line tent, where the white
wind has raked-up a swath of
old meadow—

three postured struts, vanishes
between brushstrokes, motionless
considerations.