North is weather, Winter, and change:
a wind-shift, snow, and how ice ages
shape the moraine of a mountain range.
At tree line the chiseled ledges
are ragged to climb; wind-twist trees
give way to the thrust of granite ridges,
peaks reach through abrasive centuries
of rain. The worn grain, the sleet-cut,
is magnified on blue Northwest days
where rock slides, like rip-tide, break out
through these geologic seas. Time
in a country of hills is seasonal light:
alpenglow, Northern lights, and tame
in October: Orion, cold hunter of stars.
Between what will be and was, rime
whites the foothill night and flowers
the rushes stilled in black millpond ice.
The dark, the nightfall temperatures
are North, and the honk of flyway geese
high over valley sleep. The woodland
is evergreen, ground pine, spruce,
and deadwood hills at the riverbend.
Black bear and mink fish beaver streams
where moose and caribou drink; beyond
the forests there are elk. Snowstorms
breed North like arctic birds that swirl
downhill, and in a blind wind small farms
are lost. At night the close cold is still,
the tilt world returns from sun to ice.
Glazed lichen is North, and snowfall
at five below. North is where rockface
and hoarfrost are formed with double grace:
love is twice warm in a cold place.
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