A PICTURE POEM

A PICTURE POEM

Mid afternoon, mid December
American Airlines from Dallas
drops into Calgary with the snow

Soft flakes fall as we rent the car
stop as we drive north into
an Ansel Adams world

Sky pillowed gray on gray

Houses and barns and bales
covered in white powder

Trees all a-bloom with hoary frost
both sides of the coal black road

For the next hour
any picture we take with color film
would still come out black and white

Until we top the overpass and see from a
horizon that was not a horizon
the rising of a Mandarin Orange moon