First Snow South of Two-Hearted River
by Evan Palmer
The cold’s thin whistle curls down
over Lake Superior to a field in late fall,
auburn-tipped, holding its bleached can
of beetles clicking like kicked gravel on concrete,
its wild rye stained dark at the stalk
where gophers have burrowed down,
where salamanders drag their slow bellies
through cold mud, where a rabbit
crouches still as a stone in its fur
and watches the sky blown open. Falling bodies—
even the rain has died, chunked into a cold pitch
pelting the dirt like fistfuls of hurled bone.
Even that sun working all summer
to hone the orchard into thick red globes, fails
when one gust blows the weak trees bare
and unripe fruit thumps the wet ground,
echoing like the ghosts of bison
that still wander these fields
looking for their flayed coats and spent flesh—
something to crawl inside of and finally sleep.
The cows shift and huddle. Their slow weight
anchors the pasture as it ripples, and the land,
which has held its breath all fall, lets go.