The Rooster and the viper

Early summer, and the ravine-towns cradle their acreage.
Tractors chew up snaking gravel roads,
And daughters arrange eggshells in their bowls of porridge. 

The laughing girl, runs with handfuls of cornflower and fire lily past
Farmland, and the henhouse stutters, roof caving in,
It’s splintered rafters are tarot to autumn. 

Come season, for while the rooster summons the dawn,
It is the viper who brings ember-venom to the Cascade pyre.
Turns its comb of maple plumage another shade of red.  

See now, the sickle mountains unfurl their hair like Medusa.
And flicker haze, lengthier than forked gray tongues,
Or the charcoal roads, feather-welded. 

The hammers set a pulse, tearing faster than the blooms
That used to scorch the ridges. Sparks, fly like unruly seeds,
Make stock, stone, and soup of lakes in the heat. 

And on, it simmers silos and sewer-coils to mirages,
Sink fangs into clumsy fowl, undignified aviaries, and
Croons and crows through canyons and crumbling cabin-beaks. 

Come winter, walk past blackened stags of summer's graveyard, the wildflowers
Torched to ashes. No more hatchlings, just the rafters
On my tea tray,  

the Phantom child,
and her chicken-wire bouquet.