Leaving a warm bed in January,
with the amaryllis blooming in the window, cardinals gather in the
winter willow.
A rooster comb bobs along the snowy grass
as the hunter totes his heavy self through the ice.
In the back-forty, he waits in the blind, dozing.
Dreaming in color
Dreaming in red
Of the war,
His first car
Of the crimson swish of a taffeta dress
scarlet as sin, a slim regret of a girl,
and the night they lost her ruby ring in Milan, Tennessee.
Above the white-washed blue is the unseen face of Jupiter.
The last leaves of the Sumac hang on.
A twig breaks
and the blood of the deer spills on the ground.
