Winter Across Kansas

The geese in their ragged chevrons, one arm falling apart as certain malcontents jockey for another position, then re-forming for a moment until someone else gets a wild malcontent hair.

Hawks, patient and keen, I can spot them in the bare trees along with other birds' nests. They are rounded and full against a backdrop of twiggy veins. The tree branches, ever thinner, like capillaries, until they disappear into some unseen transfer with the sky.

The fallen snow, perfectly submissive to the Invisible Hand of God, shoulders together into drifts. Sculpted together with dirt, swirled and re-swirled until it's hard and deep and resistant to all but a more acute angle of the sun.

The ponds harden into opaque discs, the streams whiten along the edges, ice creeping towards the middle. Quieter and colder, each long night deepens the waters' meditation. Any dreams of cicadas and thunderstorms are stilled as if they were just too worldly for this path to enlightenment.