Wintering Over

November days I scour the woods

for windfall, blowdown . . . young trees

the high winds tore or toppled, old trunks

not yet rotted into fresh earth, uprooted

white pine, its bark gone, pale dry limbs

I snap off, drag & carry, align & pack down

twigs & limbs & trunks all rise into great

piles — over-winter dens for skunks & voles

weasels, rabbits, & mice . . . a snow-clad

mound mimes an igloo — now picture

feasts, song & dance, the partnering off

plumping wombs, young in fur-lined nests

such imaginings might be, or might not

possibly my brush piles simply rot

Black Swamp Gooseberry

I grasp the thorny-stalked, lobe-leafed

plants near their base & yank up

the roots, shallow & widely branched

they leap from the soil, a wad of tangle

no flowers, no fruit, too many thorns

sheath all but the oldest stalks, thorns

eager to snag my skin when I walk

the woods, so I weed them out, as if

I deserve to shape the woods, decide

which plants live, which plants die

which fallen limbs must be tossed

onto piles, which young trees lopped

the woods observe me, endure me

someday soon they know I’ll be gone

Hawaiian Land Snails

759 species identified

more than 300 species extinct

they cannot travel backward

their shells are already fossils

snails emit & follow slime

preferably slime of kin or friend

Hawaiians hear snails sing

a sound like crickets

maybe it’s the sound of wind

crossing an open operculum

snails are hermaphrodites, not she

nor he but they . . . also they mate

one’s sperm for the other’s egg

sperm to use now or cache

snails lay eggs, snails give birth

newborns are fleshy, flabby

fused to the calcium-carbonate

seed of a spiraling shell

that grows larger & larger 

a mobile home that roams

the snail’s Lilliputian foraging

space, until the snail dies

shells hundreds of millions of

years old . . . traces of lost feet

from species more durable

than humans will ever be