I stepped outside

coldoutside

2015-1-2

There’s something about the Boise Train Depot that draws me back again and again.

I am noun made whole
by your verb made flesh

accompany my spring

flower my summer

come to my falls and
envelop my winter

all grass leaps for your laughter

all fires cry for your breath

all trees ache for your mystery

all water boils at our death

soil me with your presence
and cleanse me with your smile

leave me all the better
and stay with me awhile

by A.R. Ammons

Up this high and far north
it’s shale and woodsless snow:
small willows and alder brush

mark out melt streams on the
opposite slope and the wind talks
as much as it can before freeze

takes the gleeful, glimmering
tongues away: whips and sticks
will scream and screech then

all winter over the deaf heights,
the wind lifting its saying out
to the essential yell of the

lost and gone: it’s summer now:
elk graze the high meadows:
marshgrass heads high as a moose’s

ears: lichen, a wintery weed,
fills out for the brittle sleep:
waterbirds plunder the shallows.