Winter’s light –
drunk,
swallowed,
gulped;
Cupped in grateful hands.
Fingers’ curved
in grasping seams
through which
that thinned substance
too soon,
too quickly seeps,
fades,
sets.
Eyes closed,
face upturned and tilted
toward hastening light;
For a moment quenched,
replenished,
soothed —
dream of greener days
restored.
–C.Birde
A young Japanese Red Maple casts her blue shadow upon white snow. Trees paint in shadow, each work a self-portrait laid over the Earth’s seasonal canvas.
Hawk and Sparrow —
along the fallow edge they flew,
with wings and talons slicing
that perimeter unseen.
A dance of opposition —
capture and escape;
Unison of hearts intent
and beating.
Flash of yellow,
thrust of taloned legs —
Sparrow cries alarm.
Wings meshing,
beating earth and air.
Confusion of color —
ivory, woodland rusts and browns.
But Hawk cannot extract his prize,
cannot pull it under, out, and up
and lift away in flight.
Release is unexpected —
talons unclutch and liberate;
Sparrow streaks to ruffled safety
within the bristle of nearby hedge.
Beyond separating glass —
among fenced and netted stones
of slumbering, tongueless garden —
Nature’s urgent tug and pull
unfolds,
and I am Witness.
— C.Birde
Blizzard sifts and swirls without, accumulating insistent inches. Pressing up against the windows’ panes, collected snow peers inside. We are fortunate of our warmth.
The Sweetgum’s cache of seed pods are heaped upon the earth in offering. Each burlike sphere contains two small seeds. Each seed retains the bright green, star-leafed memory of its parent, and all of its potential.
The Sycamore’s distinctive and mottled skin is beautifully revealed once its leaves have drifted free. Often, I walk past this tree and its siblings, and have seen the trio clothed in Spring’s green and festooned with compact pom-pom seedpods. In Summer, they shed like snakes, curled sheaths of bark accumulating in the grass at their feet. But I think they might be most striking when plucked bare by Winter’s touch.
Without,
the birds flit and huddle
amongst silvered branches;
squirrels are plushly bundled
against the dipping cold;
thickened shadows stretch
and recline,
obedient to the sun’s lowered,
glancing angle —
All is blanched of color,
rinsed in flinty tones.
But within these walls
for a moment —
for a breath —
the ceiling is stroked with color;
a smooth field of white strung
with jeweled notes
as narrow rays strike
that small drop of faceted glass,
and pass
through myriad polished faces —
Bending,
refracting,
brightening.
— C.Birde, 1/16
Soft moss and rosettes of lichen embroider the pebbled bark of this young dogwood.
Amnesiac Winter
paid a brief visit,
confused,
complaining of jet-stream detours,
converging pressures,
ingratitude;
of invitations received late
and mislaid.
Unsettled,
he wandered,
muttering a fog,
flinging fistfuls of hail
over greening lawns and
bruising the blooms
of pink-fringed trees
that had the nerve to flower
in his absence.
— C.Birde
The antique cherry wears a gown of quilt-worked bark.