The Bergen train

by Nick Allen

it is hard to describe the precision with which 
the light that cuts between mountains is thrown 
on to the valley floor   scoring hard-edged shadows
sharp across the frozen lake and smoking river   
the great flats of snow peppered with tracks 
of animals long gone   how barns are always red 
in Norway and how every house has a small outbuilding
just for cut wood   how a bridge over a dry bed confirms 
the absence of a stream   how we saw a loping hare 
move through a garden   how in the higher branches of firs   
clotted nests of snow await some fiendish brood   
while birches bend and bend and bend under snow 
like the poor faced with the relentless grasping of the rich    
and how the great dark forests might yet be home to wolves