Sleepwalking in Snow

Venus blows a french horn to the rust-edged moon hanging upside down,
and the moon returns a wavering, old fiddle stroke, holding out a hand.
They are close tonight, in earshot, low to the west, riding the river,
and I find myself leaving the warm space of lights, no hat or gloves, out the door and over the wall onto the petrified snow that holds my weight even as I hop. It is like a frozen beach, textured sands blown through the centuries, down from the mountains and up the wide sage valley to the buttes and crags of Colorado. A sea of satin white waves shows as ink spilled by the stars, and the shadows of blood willows purple the pueblo slopes leading to the hidden gardens and lakes where the piping leads my heart. But I can't really hear it tonight. I look back to the moon and venus behind me, still together, lowering early, early, soon to be lost to the other side of the planet. The mountains call tonight, the dark ones that will take me in, and I keep walking, no jacket, no hat, no gloves, but walking past the place where the dogs go, no coyotes, a tiny wind on my numbing ears, and I know it is cold, but it doesn't mean anything. Past the strewn houses, into a place in between things, a non-place, there is a circle of open snow where the sage doesn't grow. I don't know where this is, and I've forgotten my house. The moon is dipping a tip below the curve, it is a Japanese red and venus is blinking back tears, she is sinking, bathed in crimson, so unlikely. And I lie down with my head to the west looking straight up to the Big Dipper and other spills and swirls of light, feeling the mountain between my legs. My head pushes into the hardened old snow and I arch back to catch one more look at that cherry ristra moon, but she's already gone. So soon. Venus, now small and wobbly, a pinprick of blue light without her playmate, crosses my eyes. I get up and dust off the ice grains and trudge a snaky line among the sage, colder than I remember, but closer to the fiddler in green.