Winter Sunrise Outside a Café Near Butte, Montana
A crazed sizzle of blazing bees
in the word EAT. Beyond it,
thousands of stars have faded
like deserted flowers in the thin
light washing up in the distance,
flooding the snowy mountains
bluff by bluff. Moments later,
the sign blinks, winks dark,
and a white-aproned cook—
surfacing in the murky sheen
of the window—leans awhile
like a cut lily . . . staring out
into the famished blankness
he knows he must go home to.
(first published in The Nebraska Review)
