The stoats are getting all fucked up.

A nervous slice of marble cake,

a bad split bet zigzags across

the snow that didn’t fall this year,

gone long enough for genes to make

their own cold calculation. Our mistakes

spring up before their time: red blooms

in winter, systems out of tune. 

It’s come to this – we didn’t think – 

or thought had nowhere it could go

except into compactor cubes

which slowly stack beneath the snow

that hasn’t fallen yet, but will.

Prod, like an awkward attic hatch,

the great piñata of the clouds:

the ceiling is unsealing now,

containment breached, ready to spill

on stoats, on grass, on moss, on mud,

on bulbs, on buds, on them, on us,

on television, there in black and white.