Poems by Clinton Larson

The Coming of Winter

A gust preens the hedgerow, And cold intervenes in the flow A cornstalk is borne in a field And pirouettes against a shield Of light over snow, where it leaps Skyward into rain; a peak sleeps In light, then vanishes in the steel Dark, hidden in storm, the feel Outward, white wires in the cold.

Deputy's Report

I came from the windward side of the peak, Where wraiths of shadows rise over ledges And toss away into the rolling air. Then I reined and rode down the northern ravine Of Malad Pass, over drifts of snow, to Jake's Cabin. I had remembered his guilt and tousled Worry, as if he had arisen suddenly From a dream of bearing south over canyons Of the Colorado where the breath hovers In awe before you move to feel the canyons Of being. For day closes like that, Gulfs beyond and glimmering the shades Of evening in the mauve light as you wait On the bluff of your spirit, seeing no way.

He waited at the door, grisly in the dark cold, Evenly calling to me: Arthur! Is it you? I said. Yes, beside the snow-dusted logs That wisped frost gathering like a hand And making strands of bark stiffen angular And sharp, like flint. He asked into the darkness: Why have you come? To fetch me home to Malad?

No. To see if you were well. You haven't come in To spend the winter. The nights of a mile And a half high can seep into the mind like winds Over the rock slopes above the pass and keep you Here. Why have you come? Carswell died Across my line, on my fence that he ripped down And pulled into my grain. It will not do, Jake. Come in as you honor the crest of grain That shapes and mellows the hill you keep. Gather the peace of gulls wandering Against the clouds. I will die for what I've done. No. And he turned like a shouldering steer Into a stall, his gait rolling him forward, face Set misshapen, worry in a devotion of pain That he knew must end. Then he looked back, To catch my resolve like a rock thrust up And cragged like a Fury killed. He drew his question Into him and kept it there as he closed The door. The lamp dimmed, coasting out, And around the cabin the cold seethed darkly, The cabin itself like an outcropped boulder. Then a bullet slammed into the silence, the sound Muffling over the new snow. I found his body, My hands fumbling for a wick to light, But touching him coldly in the darkness. I stepped back into the open doorway. Jake? And the grass beyond the room Rose before the wind, freezing, gathering Lobes of frost in the light of my mind.

Autumnal

Frost visits a pall mid-air; the upland mists Hush silvering whitegold into a cottony patina Of evergreens; a round and luminary moon persists Through drifting halos of weather. A concertina Wheezes in the hollow's musicale of firelight: Schottische or dancing in the square, a voice Calling home, and the star of hands slight The dark reverence of shadows, as if the choice Of a saucily tossing head moving and flaring red Upon red out of flame as the firefly sparks Ascend, swirl, and flicker out. But what sped Across the ebon mantle of vales, across parks Of hoarfrost fields and lawns, riding on light? Down in the caves of Walpurgis autumn's dark Is the mirroring spring where wizards plight Their fell secrecy, whispering: hounds bark Miles away, inquisitive in brambles and sedge For some white fur, and a thin scream wanes In a rustle of leaves. What oath or pledge Repines in the mindlight of autumn and reigns In me as I scan these still meadows of night? Am I the daemon I strike from the imperium Up the sky, far east, or the entailing fright I smooth in me, primeval in my cold delirium?