traveling south on a steely stretch of highway  
another Texas winter draws sweat from my lip 

yellowing fields & a big sky, painfully blue  
a swallowing expanse without a single cloud 

cows scatter in fields muzzle-deep in the sweetgrass  
& like these creatures I have gained a sort of freedom 

a little box of quiet, mine for two days with a lake view  
jammy sun melting into the water & even in solitude 

this knotted fist of wet muscle continues to beat wife mother  
as far south as I fly like a broad-winged hawk carves the sky 

they say what loves you always returns after a dormant season  
as sure as the dark swims back to us each plum-colored night 

I have loved many people fiercely but what about love  
like a hand cupping water, or the final breath before sleep 

softly, openly – all your armor blown away like a dandelion  
a love that doesn’t ask for much but occasional room to fly 

somewhere on that highway I stopped for gas & saw a man  
washing each pump in slow circles so they shone in the sun 

to know that all things in tender hands can be made new  
that each year lays its fine blanket of dirt on all of us 

I’ve heard that far from this patch of rural countryside  
there is an eternal flame that burns through water & storm 

deep in the dusky shale some call it marvel miracle — though  
I’ve never glimpsed this burning it’s enough to know it exists 

to know it’s out there ablaze after thousands of years seen  
by so many eyes a light dancing even through its own death 

& what finally speaks of winter here in the south here are the trees  
their bare tangle twisted branch with branch cagey and leafless 

hardly any color beyond the earthy spectrum of browns & golds  
yet inside the possumhaw berries still sing their brilliant red 

sprung only from the female trees aglow in the passing landscape  
so bright, so alive, you would swear the woods were on fire