A glancing westward in the morning light
of crispy mid-November finds a tree:
a loose-leafed skeleton of branch, a sight
of hibernating winter fantasy.
Its bony limbs are lace against the white
horizon built of fog upon the sea,
and so appear as forests on a height
of mountain sloped in snowy majesty.

And further westward now the morning’s grown,
a tree that’s arrow-straight attracts my eye:
a spear of evergreen that rears alone,
its top a whisker scraping at the sky.
And where a mast would let a watcher go,
there stands and calls a solitary crow.