Winter Hatchlings for the New Year
after Norman Dubie
Like a Buddhist painting, winter
caps the peaks of Sierra Escalona,
its frosted strawberry trees mourning what’s to come.
Acorn seedlings fleck the ground in soft contrast
and high in the belfry of a misplaced bethel,
eagle-owls are courting.
The Duchess, boar-spear in hand,
posts herself in a break among the thicket,
gentle static from her boots on skift
dissipating across frozen air, her
heavy breaths like fleeting clouds among dancing flakes.
A wild boar, bristly hairs erect on its mane,
is drawn to the hunt, spurred on
