The State Bird

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.