photo by Collyn Ware

The Way of Things
 
As the sun slips below the ridge,
the day dissolves into the tree line,
a smudge pot of coral
then the palest yellow and near-blue.
 
In the cabin, I look out at the timber.
I can barely see the white tips of his antlers
pierce the dusk.
When he moves, he parts the nettles.
He makes a way, this young buck,
his dun-slicked back like the hull of a cargo ship
pushing the night forward.
 
It’s the way of things:
this pushing the next thing forward,
the inevitable, first as a suggestion
and then as a thing of its own.
 
It’s the way of things:
the darkness on a steady course,
time its lodestar.
 
For in the blink of an eye,
the day who spent the hours with abandon—
light and color painting the world with such a broad and lovely brush—
succumbs.
 
Then the buck beds down in the cedar thicket,
and the hills tremble with coyotes.
Cold so clear it shines
crowns the world.
 
But in the blink of an eye,
the thickets stir again.
The hills simmer all golden and garnet,
and every stone is jeweled with frost.
 
It’s the way of things:
the day refusing to die,
germinating in the ash heap,
and promising—like a sleeping seed—
its return.