lines in winter

1.

First a bright planet with two stars above it, a string of lights. Mars. And then Orion, so close we stopped on the side of the highway last night to look at him, the stars of his belt–Alnitac, Alnilan, Mintaka–glittering. And the Great Bear, “pivoting in the sky before Orion”, Jupiter just above. To the west, Venus through the Douglas firs, and a huge moon rising.

2.

Just now, as I write, a winter wren alighted on my window frame, in search of spiders. To whom do I owe this pleasure.

3.

From Brendan, a photograph of a great horned owl. From Manon, A. plunging through the pool, his first length of the butterfly stroke. During my own swim this morning, I watched ravens high above the school field, courting. Everywhere frost, the moon on its way west in the the blue sky.

4.

Empty peaks, silence: among sparse stars,
Not yet flawed, it drifts. Pine and cinnamon
Spreading in my old garden . . . All light,
All ten thousand miles at once in its light!

5.

A single yellow primrose is blooming by the greenhouse door.

Note: the quoted fragment in number 1 is from the Odyssey, Book V, translated by Robert Fitzgerald. Number 4 is a passage of Du Fu, translated by David Hinton.