Sharon Auberle & Ralph Murre: Porte des Morts

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crow and seagull

on whirling winds

a white orchid at the window

fading

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Dull olive of cedar outweighs other colors, rationed so carefully in northern winter. The ground is snow-covered; the sky gray; the bay, jagged slates, soon to be frozen. Slender crimson of osier, hue of salmon-flesh where the wind has stolen bark from birch. Rarely, salmon on the rocky foreshore to feed a gull or crow.

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Winter reminds us that all things come and go. There is freedom in what remains—the bones, the wind, bare branches. An old man dies on an island.

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out in the passage

a ferryman’s fog-signal

the great lake steaming

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by Sharon Auberle & Ralph Murre

Sister Bay, Wisconsin

And Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin