Winter falls fast as
the road rises. Slow
sun has been setting
the scene for hours.

Prairie grass bows south
through barbed wire. Yellow
alone does not suffice to
describe it in this light.

It is the north wind lying
cold across the plains in the stems
kneeling, the color of ice deep inside
dry grass long before the road ices.

It is a promise, the real presence
of what is to come. And when I stop
and turn, as everything turns,
the moon, full, is what it is,

what it has been, where it will be, where it has
been from the beginning, pure cold light rising.