The yard, turned on its flank, stares, motionless as a dumb white horse.
Ice stifles the limbs of the star magnolia and the hair of the marguerites pokes like bones.
Stagnation is sinewy here, a substance. It is waiting, shockingly nude, for impression. Nerves hum through it like lantern light. It is split. On the far left edge the cotoneaster hedge is hemorrhaging red, red with a roil of berries and red-bellied birds, and the robins bulge with a hot light, like coals.