Pastures where the grass round granite grows
and not immoderate greenness gives homage
to the long fight with clutched rock & snowcap

with the sun near spoondrift in the wind, and cows
licking sunbaked snowsalt crusts on stones,
hooves akimbo under the bright etched map

of tropical isles in the goldribbed sky all summer
bespeak, in the noonheat, the rigour of cold climates,
as fishspine shoals, sunbleached when the tide’s out, show

the integrity of bone. Who would encumber
these huckleberryfields’ sparse opulence with tropics’
richesse? Wise clouds withhold vermilion snow.