Rabbit Lake Log House Where I First Read the Tao

One quarter inch iron stove

In a wide grey room facing the opposite

Plunge of the valley, frost on the inner walls, the early nineties –

Where else to sleep but in front of the cherry blackness,

One sleigh, drifts and a moon pressed into the metal,

In a winter bag, on a moose hide rug, waking every few hours

To lay in poplar chunks broken

From the iced pile behind the kitchen.

I’d light a propane lamp later,

Put a kettle on the hottest part of the stove’s plate

For instant and watch white trees come out of dark.

A beautiful woman had left me.

Unskinned stars every night,

The river was frozen a half mile below

Under animal scratches through snow.

The house was still and stepped back even in late morning,

Horsehair couch, some sort of tip-toedness even in the biblical quotations

In glass ovals on the wall; the old logs in the loaned house

Cracked as if they made a boat

Moving across a sea of buoyant cold.