Near the Fraser

 two-something miles from home to town

I walked all winter to keep from drowning

gravel, no margin, golf course, frozen pond

I held my breath to see the beaver and her dam

and the gash of the creek, awash with sound

the meadow a tawny fireman's sheet

split by the creek like pages on a spine

held smooth and flat between the arms of trees,

a rookery crowding the tallest of their crowns

from a river of crows that ran eye to horizon

What can I do, now that I'm gone

from that place of silence and cold

Is there still a dead branch inside my body

where the bark is bleached to white

where the arms reach out in a fierce, sharp pose

and the hard trunk arches up?

Does a train still scream through a blanket of fog 

to deliver longing and dreams

does its whistle still blow over snow and ice

to fill up the carnal night?

Or do I only have dishes and toilets and screens

and the lonely landscaped block

is there still a table—a wilderness feast—

here, in married life?