Cross-Country Poem by Martha Zweig

Skis underfoot, I was playing at remuda-
just in my ears, at first, because, stride
for stride, the leathery snow
creaked up at me like saddle-on-horseback:
I thought next I'd neigh. Call this Vermont
landscape, for instance, Montana; sunstruck plateau wideopen

& around it the wintry scrub
roan-colored hills neighborly shoved
their ridges into each other, stiff
gray deciduous trees abristle, cropped manes.
Here & there deep dog
flounces broke up the trailbank;
must be ole
Bluff, run on
ahead from the start, flushed hares.

Never thought dinnertime; let loose
ends of mind flap around. Then when the turnoff
dropped into deep balsam, & shocked-pink-&-
chartreuse suddenly flickered the shades, what's
this? some florid spring orchard?- no,
snowblind; swept on through, shied off the wet
wads the loaded branches sloughed only to whip
back up & knock down more, & there's

that collie snuffling the pocks, hysterical- spooked
me into the open.
Lapsed snow
dangled as usual off the pine ledge halfway home & the crest
whistled idly still, dead-to-the-world bears in its pockets.