SNOWMELT
Supper talk was of last year’s snow,
thaw was late, the mountains white
and now as June was growing old
the run-off might come overnight.
If we never pass this way again,
stand and admire the antiquated kilter,
the accommodations wood makes
with itself, and then as shelter
and then our landlord’s brisk ‘goodbye’ –
isolated, garrulous pioneer,
minding his cabin bought mail-order,
shipped and delivered here
as a lonely script, this equerry
speaks of an attendant life, sublime,
‘I might be living out
someone else’s design’ –
and as our highway thunders,
less than a notional block,
and new bridges speed us over
the gorge to another flat-pack,
posted, no doubt, from a hanger lot
near the foot of the Cascades, we race
the snowmelt, like the racket
in a locomotive’s distant embrace.