convene...

Who started the silence

in the tree just outside

my kitchen window,

that through the frosted

glazing caught me

as static birds perch

ornamentally still,

is anybody's guess.

As my eyes, over the sill,

gazing upward for death

from above and downward

for death from below,

sense that nothing is amiss.

Only the stoppage of time

in an envelope just outside

my wooden bubble of warmth.

Sparrow, Junco, Cardinal and Wren,

like overwound clockwork toys,

wait in avid, anxious torpor

for the right moment to slip by

that will fling them into motion,

and it does, like a taut jump-rope

on a city street in summertime,

that meeting warm slate at intervals

loosley keeping time with breath,

causes heavy feet to rise into thin air...

lucy meskill