Sunlight strikes the leafless aspen branches,
strikes the white picket fence, and as I
look at highlighted edges, my eyes sting.
Tufted grass stalks sway in the flooding rays,
and, in the poinsettia of this hour, I need
some darkness to bloom: in this space
a snow leopard leaps among rocks,
the rosettes of its fur a moving landscape;
its hunger scents the air. As I exhale,
a blue-throated hillstar sips from a Chuquiragua
flower, a fly agaric pushes out of soil,
a raccoon scampers backward down an elm—
we are always running from and lunging to;
when we stop, the eagle feather
of this pause blesses. Before light
of the shortest day lifts to the hills,
it runs across my line of sight in widening gold.