High air

Here rain falls
dimming daylight
yet leaves cling
and stay green
until they're sluiced
off reluctant trees
and down running gutters.

Beneath high air
at my centre
there's hard frost
every morning now
leaves are long gone
coloured, dried
and tossed east by
foreshadowing wind
first thin skiffs of snow
have already swirled,
hissing like dry sand
hitting winter reeds
dancing through
low wool grass
and yellowgray clay
cliffs and coulees
and then dissolved
in the desert's thirst.