Two ravens circle above the snow,
blacker than before.
Some dead thing is down there in the wasteland
where last summer, a few pieces of cardboard,
an old rug, and the ashes of a camp fire
told of someone’s home.

This morning, an early snow fills 
the tin can that glowed like a star 
each time the hot butt of a cigarette 
found its dark mouth;
and snow enters the cardboard house
spread like a picnic cloth
beneath the juniper in the arroyo.

Even the pack of wild dogs 
whose dark barking helped the sun rise
is lost in this snow, this radiant snow
whiter than before because two ravens
bless it with black wings.

This morning’s birds sail
above the drainage ditch,
black bodies rising
and falling as one,
as once they wheeled
from Brueghel’s wooded hills
to hang in dark clouds
above the river.

These winter birds are foam
at the planet’s edge,
waves of them pushing
against the sky, arcing up
and out until forced back
by air too thin, by gravity,
to the constant trees.
We are all their forest.
                        

On Sandia Crest the sun
stuns the Earth,
its huge blinding eye
turning snow to fire.

It swells in the absolute
blue of the sky,
its dark pupil fueling
luminous, uneven lunges
of the corona.

Or it is a mouth
with many tongues
licking up the mountains,
the slopes of blue spruce.

This sun finds the bones
beneath our cheeks, the small
white echoes of our skulls
which will not shine
unless they are an offering
scattered on the mountainside.