a little relief
a little relief
not as cold, not as windy,
a light gray sky.
a big flock of crows – dozens – flying happily:
not too fast, not too straight.
plenty of looking around,
plenty of conversation,
more than I’ve seen together in a long time,
since West Nile killed so many.
I hope they stay.
swift silent still
silent,
swift, then suddenly still.
an angel of death,
beautiful and terrible,
merciful and cruel
I notice the silence, the stillness fall over me before I see the flash of white wings: a barred owl. She swoops into our locust tree, watches, listens and waits.
Blue jays come looking for food, full of bravado, talking loudly to ward off their fear. But it works, breaking her concentration, and she turns her head quickly to follow their commotion. Distracted, she moves away.
olive drab thaw
Warm – in the twenties – heavy haze in the morning and softening snow. More birds come out, refueling. Goldfinches in olive-drab winter garb are back at the thistle-seed feeder. By early afternoon there are hints of washed-out sun.
editing
Brightening sky – everything a bright gray through light snow.
Gray squirrels move like living punctuation marks in the snow. A comma suddenly becomes an exclamation point
and three semicolons go flying up a tree.
There are no letters at all until the crows arrive. First, two groups of four I’ve seen before, and then a few outsiders, three or four. Composing short poems as they peck for corn, they are swept up all at once then put back down again for more. But soon they’re gone for good, leaving only a few stray apostrophes on a blank page.
winter flotsam
Winter relaxes his grip, and the snow we had all but vanishes.
After it melts, it leaves the first flotsam of the winter: a wasp’s
nest, a summer home painstakingly constructed one cell, one chewed
fiber at a time, now abandoned, knocked off its perch, blown about on
the ground. I give it a new perch on my desk, and remember the wasps that made it home.
Our cats stand on the pond ice and lap up water as it melts.
