A Killing Frost

Beside the pond in late November,

I’m alone again

as apples drop in chilly woods

and crows pull tendons like new rubber

from a road-kill mass.

Ice begins to knit along the ground,

a bandage on the summer’s wounds.

I touch the plait

of straw and leaf-mold, lingering to smell

the sweet cold crust.

An early moon is lost

in sheer reflection,

wandering, aloof and thinly clad,

its eye a squint of expectation.

And I know that way,

this looking for a place to land

where nothing gives,

these boundaries of frost and bone.