Our Winter

Mid-January and winter has arrived at last.

The branches droop beneath the snow of two

Storms. No bird has sung for us in days.

I have read of winters so cold, so long,

The birds fell like leaves from the trees.

Always war is raging nearby or the smoke

Of the crematorium has smeared the snow,

Like a gray, vague, indecipherable rubbing.

No bird in my backyard falls from a branch

That doesn't catch the air beneath its wings

And swoop off into the wind with a kind

Of triumph. I have never been shot at either.

Yet, in the next county, a man

Was dismembered and his body parts used

In a ritual with no better purpose than

The resurrection of some long dead devil.

Not forty miles from here, a girl of sixteen

Was hog-tied and set on fire by two brothers

Who confessed she had teased them with her

Body. One brother accused the other

Of dancing to the rhythm of her screams.

Each day, I watch the birds. This morning,

A cardinal sits hunched on a limb --

As if I'd mistake him for a bloody fist.