Her map shows the bottomlands where deer drink rain,
the dredge-ponds healed over by slow
films of time-lapse ice,
and sad, seasonal bungalows
on the ridge-rim of town, closed down
for winter, pipes drained,
beds cold —
Among juniper and stripped willow scrub
cranberries spring from cheechako graves
in the still chillness so beloved by hunters
and also by their game.
The lost sun has left its light in the fruit
and the eye in love always seeks in the heathery
groundcover mossed removes where any two
might lie together, somehow.
Her map shows the bottomlands where
deer drink rain, cupped in leaf-loam
or hollowed lobes of granite,
and a fleeting refuge
on the city’s ridge-rim, closed down
for winter, pipes drained,
bed cold.