Mid-January and winter has arrived at last.
The branches droop beneath the snow of two
storms. No bird has sung for us in weeks.
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 and 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.
And yet, not forty miles from here a man
was dismembered and his body parts used
in a ritual with no better purpose than
the resurrection of some long dead devil.
In the next county, 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.
And so, each day, I watch the birds. This
morning, a cardinal sat hunched on a limb—
as if I’d mistake him for a bloody fist.
