Yahara Winter

"Autumn rains ending in this river town,
and wine gone, your lone sail soars away."
  – Li Po, "Fairwell to a Visitor Returning East"










Mild temperatures we walk the ice,
thin snow covers hundreds of fishing holes.

Yesterday forty small shacks stood
as if the skyline of a city block.

We follow eagle tracks from where it landed
as if from nowhere and smothered a sunfish

then walked off near shore to open water
where the talon marks just disappeared.

Today the sun has slid behind the curtain
again and fishing holes like mirrors abandoned.