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Show // A Mourner in Winter Dress Tongue lapping, coat steaming with my heat, I hunt the banks of an icy stream, eyes wide for movement, sniffing for a warm trace. I am touched by her scent, old and faint on the dried stem of a sunflower dead and yellow against the frozen crust. Owls descend, taking their places on the black branches of bare maples by the long meadow, searching with hot, gold eyes for twilight's first mouse. Cold black stones, laced with bright lichens, a single, dry tuft of her hair caught under a splinter at the corner of a pole fence. My tracks reveal nothing. I wander and circle, skirting the baited carcass of the sheep I killed last night. I leap a wire fence, gain the ridge in full darkness, raise my grey face to a star: listen, man. I'm singing for your death. |
