Black-backed, black-masked cardinal
burning on a branch. Season of ice: sense that nothing
is quite solid –
…………….,…..though there is earth below.

In lowlands, the strict cursive
of bare vineyards
…………….,,,,…..and a liver-shaped creek
breaks into veins
……………,,,……under hooves braceleted with mud.
Reactions slow. Scales of ice
……………,…,,…………………ride the breaks out.
Fish stringers rust from frozen shore to pond-bottom.

A destination, but how to get there? Down the middle
of Highway Twenty a man peddles a child’s bike through drifts: inconsolable
obstacle, dusting of snow
……………………..,…………..now perfect, now a mange of gray.
In the rearview, the man and the fir drop
…………………………..,………………………….back into night
into that sudden sleep that feels like falling.

Adam Day is the recipient of a 2010 PSA Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and the recipient of a 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award. His work has appeared in the Boston Review, APR, Poetry London, AGNI, The Iowa Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Kenyon Review, Guernica, London Magazine, and elsewhere. He coordinates The Baltic Writing Residency, is an advisory editor for the literary & comics journal Catch Up, and is currently writer-in-residence at Earlham College.