Today’s wind gusts itself into nouns:
gusts, in short. So cold our eyes ache
in numb sockets. Light, new snow jigs up
in swirls like curtains swell to a dervish
ecstasy – then suddenly subside. Like smoke,
or steam, or the ghosts that people
who’ve never seen one see as clouds
of vapor. Spirit is no person, place, or thing,
but existence. Action. A tough, tiny chickadee
rides the hopper bar, bobbing on the feeder
as it sways on its pole in the surging gale,
hanging sideways by sturdy, little legs.
Cute, we suppose, as what we call the dickens.
And generous, dropping a black oil seed
to the red squirrel shivering on the deck
for every one she snatches. To glimpse
the black bead glinting amidst the black mask
of the chickadee, you must creep near
like a specter. But the black nothing
filling that fathomless well can only be seen
from away. Perhaps how ghosts, who flit
or float or mist around us, maybe see
what we call the stuff of this world.
William Hathaway lives in Surry.
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