Mrs. White’s Nothing, Mistress Winter’s Jump

Finally, the first winter storm

In the higher elevations,

Already almost the solstice.

As snow starts to fall, they’re burning

Heaps of aspen brush at sunset,

A series of eerie bonfires

Flaring like pagan rituals

From some culture that doesn’t belong

To these woods, receding through snow

And darkening lines of white trees,

Orange pyres for the woods themselves.

One Dabrowski poem contended

That all good poems are like ski jumps

Into nothing, ended halfway,

In midair. Winter’s in the air.