WINTER FIRES

Color comes with cold and wet

within the canyon, even before

the creek flows or sycamores burn

leather brown to shed their clothes—

white bodies tangled in a pagan dance

to gods unknown.  Orioles return

as sparks in the brush, levity

in the pink overcast of dawn.

We glean the fallen skeletons

of oak and brittle manzanita

to fill the woodstove. Curious cattle

come to wonder what we’re about.