IGNORING THE BOREALIS 

We have braved the petrified winter inside
to stand watch in the ditch and gape
at sheer horizon east of Divide.
Accustomed to pavement, we can’t explain
the weed at our feet that has flowered
and frozen, or how tonight it should be enough
it’s flowered at all, wind and cloudless
April cold fixing sky in place. Early run-off
blurs the creek, threatens to fill the entire
ravine. Deer or not, it’s now our business
to scan the earth, the growing dark, horizon
looming like a predator storm. Here in this ditch,
lights of the car and the moon at our backs,
the bloom we found uproots in the grass.

                                                                        for Leo