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
