by Lowell Jaeger
Last night, snow swathed the meadow.
This morning we scroll the window shades
and trace nature’s busy history of trails,
hooves and clawed footfalls crisscrossing
acres blanketed white.
Such complicated comings and goings,
traversing so nearby
while we slumbered unsuspectingly.
Deer, elk, rabbit, squirrel, raccoon,
milling about the moonless overcast midnight.
Even now, invisible birds converse
in the treetops. Beneath winter’s crust
an army of voles tunnels and toils
to construct a maze of hidden causeways.
Among beasts, we are bold and obvious and blind.
Lowell Jaeger, as founding editor of Many Voices Press, compiled New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from 11 Western states. His seventh collection of poems, Or Maybe I Drift Off Alone, was published by Shabda Press in 2016. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council and winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize. Most recently Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting thoughtful civic discourse.
Hawaii Pacific Review 
Bold and obvious and blind, yes. I spent most of my life in the Maine woods which provided lots of fodder for my own poetic musings. We’ve lived in Hawaii these past 11 years, but your words carried me right back to that crisscross of “hooves and clawed footfalls” so near the house and us clueless … unless one awoke to a young bear batting at the bird feeders or spotted a puff of chill vapor as it exited a moose’s nostrils just beyond the clearing … Not to mention the birds … Thanks for the wintertime memories. Aloha.
“complicated comings and goings”, that’s nice…