Barn doors are latched against the snow
and a slash of red roof slants across winter’s pale, oncoming frame:
when a grouse,
flecked and surprisingly elegant
sails low through the yard, hitting
doors with crunch of bone,
the rupturing sac –
so that an angularity of feathers slides
slow toward the still exposed gravel of the drive,
trailing bloodied tracks to answer
gravity’s dark urgings,
the density of this clotted earth;
even as the honeyed light of lamps
springs up in human windows –
the silken weave of feather and warm body,
the airiness of skeleton, acuity of eye,
flight’s bold trajectory –
all fall askew,
broken and
cooling already as evening
floods the wide and darkening fields of death’s wilderness –
its blackening grasses,
its blank interruption.