Mother, you sent me red-hooded and skinny, tasked
with gifts for your own Mother. In my basket
I carry apple bread under a gingham napkin.
Snow clothes the trees, their arms hold the forest.
I climb bridges of branch carcasses. Wood resting
awaits when billbugs and larva awake in their nests.
Holly limbs burst in a berry flush.
Your eggs have all cracked, streaming viscous and hushed.
Mother, I’ve lost the path—
trunk patterns changed in last spring’s seedling rush.
Where the hill seeps away from the roots of an oak
I’ll hide from the wolves in the cheek of my cloak.
