And I briefly stay, watch sparrows flit, perch 

on branches as light threads through the birch tree’s

last leaves. The birds trace concentric trails, briefly.

The sun divides them in two, and they join again,

briefly, then spiral to the sky: one west,  one east,

like heart and mind.  Stray feather, flurry of frost, perforation 

in the firmament’s fabric; stars stitch night together again. 

And again, only snow uncoiling in sheets from ice-swept grass: 

I am without sight. And again, the cold wind 

like needles on my skin: I am without caress. I tread home,

passing rows of stripped trees clasping their weak heat.

The lost fluting of night carves into my bones, the sound

of an outcast heart, my heart, carried in this air where

darkness has unveiled all that light hides. 

The moon is blunt as a nickel, and the trilling 

of a lone nighthawk dives from the sky. Winter’s devastation: 

cyclamens clinging to life, the landscape paralyzed, 

trees pared to veins. When the heart freezes over,  

the mind is a cracked vessel. And those sparrows wheeled 

to that blown, black sky hours ago; it’s late,

the birch trees’ shadows break. Back inside my house,

the moon’s silver rays pierce the window 

and silence settles into the baseboards.

What solace do I have? The draft clatters a door.

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