The temper of this morning is bare: strict
white. The yard, turned on its flank,
stares, motionless as a dumb white horse.

Ice stifles the limbs of the star magnolia
and the hair of the marguerites pokes like bones.
Stagnation is sinewy here, a substance.

This body is not calm--no breathing, no sleep.
It is waiting, shockingly nude, for impression.
Nerves hum through it like lantern light.

There--gashed. It is split.
On the far left edge the cotoneaster
hedge is hemorrhaging red,

red with a roil of berries and red-bellied birds,
and the robins bulge with a hot light,
like coals.