I have come late to the parchment ice.
The others are gone, following the sun
through pinked oaks, attenuated need,
one trance emptied into another,
not even an old schism of crows.
I begin slowly. A simple glide
from shore, memory and consent.
The wind is busy with snow grains.
My motion is a stillness, the struck
dream changed by the refusal to change.
Below, the fish, mostly bass and bullheads,
mutter with hook-scarred lips.
High on a white staircase the hare
listens for the creak of the fox.