#11 — They’re Here!

Goldfinch

The emptiness of unseasonable cold,
the most unbearable form of cold,
permeates the final buried layer
of epidermis, deflates the already
sagging lungs. Where is the slow,
silent awakening, the warming
and greening of fallow, frostbit soil,
the sudden budding of icy,
leafless limbs? Within the void of absent
spring, a state of sorrow persists until now.
A sudden flash of yellow on a yet-cold
afternoon, a streak of white, swift, electric, the
darting of winged bodies as tiny vagrants
cling to the feeder after arriving nonchalantly
in the city despite hail balls and April snow
from their neo-tropical winter in the
fragrant mountains of Mexico,
the sun-drenched hills of Costa Rica.
The arrival results in an anxious hope,
even as dark clouds gather, despite the lurking
of parasitic cowbirds, flitting in flagrant disregard
of pesticide-spiked lakes, thinning eggs,
shrinking swamps, and politicians
of a certain persuasion
whining about the loss of every little
thing that has ever brought misery
to a planet embattled by loneliness.
Except it’s not lonely anymore.
It is yellow and feathered and bright.