Winter Tracks

Ruffed grouse, turkey, white-tailed deer.
Busy lines of congregated turkey flocks
crisscross the buried, frozen marsh
where edible new buds lie just beneath the snow.
Wing-tip feather marks show the effort to stay upright.

On the fringe of the hemlocks,
a glassy bowl in the shallower snow
marks the circle of a deer’s bed.

Weasel, fox, coyote.
Coming down the hill from farther up, alternating prints;
it’s not difficult for the mind’s eye
to conjure the trotting coyote, nose down.
Likewise where a fox has paused, rear feet together,
then punched its forelegs down into a rodent burrow.

Elsewhere, a weasel’s queer bunchy bounding
has left its distinct marks as it scampered about,
sniffing for fresh mouse holes.

Red squirrel, gray squirrel, vole, deer mouse.
The quick dashes out of safety
where the trees or burrows are too far apart,
venturing out to scavenge seeds or visit caches.
Then, rush back to the subnivean semi-darkness
and the nest lined in milkweed down and cattail fluff.

These days, the news is printed fresh each day
one careful character at a time, line after line,
the quintessential neighborhood report.