21 Nov Back 40: Six Haiku for Winter

Both sky & mountain
wearing the same coat today
Faces lost in breath

Yellow leaves drifting
on soon to be frozen pond
Ships at sea of clouds

Slipping on the ice
Old man wonders: Is this my
last time hearing birds?
Snow-deepened night sky
Each flake exactly alike:
All melt in the end

Pushing through the gray
Crow above the field’s stubble
The new year’s first bird

Woodstove. Coffee. Quilt.
Old farmhouse slowly waking
bone by bone by bone

Marc Beaudin is a poet, theater artist, and bookseller based in Livingston, Montana. He is the author of These Creatures of a Day, Life List: Poems, and Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals, and his work is widely anthologized in publications dedicated to environmental and social justice.