Off the Back Roads

Night speaks gradually – a shifting
darkness lines the linden trees.

Women huddle in the grove,
beside the humps of earth.

They repeat legends, knowing
the rivers and mountains are always there.

On the shores of the shallow green lake
a fiddle player strikes a drab cadenza

that drifts across this land of pine and hemlock
and scares the chickens scratching in the yard

disturbs the geckoes sunning on the wall
as though a hawk had come to clutch its prey.

Ground squirrels regain their burrows.
A mountain goat retires to the foothills,

dreaming of ridges and switchbacks, the high
backdrop to everyone’s small adventures.

In the barn a howling mongrel whelps
as night limps in with something

limp in its mouth.
The air is an empty chamber.

Rising from the meadow,
a murder of rooks roosts in a tree.

By morning, the footprints that criss-
cross the refuge will be blown clear.