Fiesole

By dawn, the pools of snowmelt have iced,
Crooked frost arms reaching out from grass
And fallen pinecones. Birds sing unseen.

For the first hour and a quarter, no one
But a nuthatch in sight. Then, in an hour,
Three vehicles up, look, turn around.

At the road closure, the second-home
Summer-home owners park their pickups,
Unload their snowmobiles and half-tracks

Then blast off into higher country still,
Leaving behind all their trailers and trucks.
As Boccaccio recently noted, it helps

To have a remote-ish countryside estate
In which to wait out a plague. Another hour
And the sheriff shows, cruising up slowly,

Ticketing empty vehicles in turnouts,
Telling anyone in or near a vehicle just go,
But ignoring the trucks with empty trailers,

Of course. Well, good for the birds,
You know—the wild turkeys strolling
The road before dawn, the puffed-up Tom,

Nuthatches, bluebirds, woodpeckers, jays,
All the wrens and, further down, the robins,
Meadowlarks, and roadrunners. The ravens

Might be more ambivalent about the quiet
And presumed sharp reduction in roadkill,
But good for the deer and the jackrabbits,

For the more furtive rodents, as well
As all the bold chipmunks and squirrels.
For a human without spare house and title,

However, for campers and wayside hermits,
Now it’s time to go. Time to play a little
Game called feudal world. See how it goes.