Tracking Buddha \ Raven In Winter Feels Free

Alan:  Nancy put this one on the refrigerator – her highest honor.

Tracking Buddha

This morning was perfect

for tracking Buddha:

a little fresh fluff

on crust you could run on:

snow’s formlessness

holding the perfect forms

of the prints.

I found plenty of

squirrel tracks –

tracks of whitefooted mice –

voles – the lick of their tails –

a shrew’s starved scribble –

coyotes, hares –

fox’s purposeful meander –

but no Buddha.

Searching the field edge,

crossing the wide glare

to peer under apples,

spruces, I read the news

of porcupines – deer –

raccoons – even, by the marsh,

some geese.  No Buddha.

Then, on my neighbor’s land,

near the vanished farmhouse

and ramshackle barn,

I found where a grouse

had stepped out

from the woods,

stitched its careful, straight seam –

put its wings down, once –

and flew, what, five yards?, six?,

surely just a single beat,

to land in a sliding skid

of two long parallel

furrows.

I imagine that bird

waking after a bitter night

to peer from cover into sun –

step forth – look around

cautiously and, 

knowing it is alone,

execute a moment

of perfect impromptu

silliness

before walking on,

wings at sides

as if in silent

meditation

into the far trees.

Nancy:  The raven’s a bird of infinite fascination, acrobatic, versatile and clever.

Raven In Winter Feels Free

Listen to that high flown rhetoric!

Raven’s preaching, running for election,

riding his invisible bike on an invisible wire,

punning, coining aphorisms, assuming

a supervisory position,

and delivering himself of various pithy

(and unsolicited) bits of advice.

In the winter, Raven’s positively garrulous.

We’re astonished.  Wouldn’t you be astonished

to see your quiet neighbor take his calloused hands

out of his pocket and launch into The Devil’s Trill

on a harmonica?  Why, it’s like watching the parson

do the hula on a beach in Hawaii –

still in his three piece suit.

No doubt about it, winter can be long

and hard, but summer folks miss a lot:

winter’s a good time

to get to know the neighbors.

“Raven In Winter Feels Free” first appeared in Blueline magazine.