In winter, Route 19 splits West Virginia in two,
and the mountains lean back from the road:
old men with thinning hair
you can see right down to the roots.
Everyone lives up close:
a farmhouse with tire swing and tractor,
pushing snow and pulling snow and piled up
to windshield with it, white and idle;
double-wide trailer wedged on the hill,
white lawn ornamented with a child’s playhouse:
plastic logs and open door
and the roof gone missing.
a fence of wood and wire,
whose swoop and sag demonstrate
indifferently the slope of the hill;
beneath the snow, the wire traps a glut of rusting leaves.
a dark and grit-lined parking lot,
a pick-up truck and two cars, salt-caked,
a neon sign– an invitation–
to the gentlemen’s club.
and on both sides, the trees:
black and dun, leaning or standing straight,
they hold their branches in the air.
now they are quiet, brooding or aloof, waiting
and cradling, all along their arms,
the tender burden of the snow.
