Winter Birds

Slow circles
survival’s muttering flotilla
of buoyant quacks
that worry black water’s warmth
of 32 degrees
just short of the freeze
stirred
by tired paddling
Maybe a dozen—clockwise slow
till morning finds the one that slept
through snow’s hypnosis
in dawn’s quiet clench....

Stomach churning
acid burning
Monday turning
into Tuesday

and
time goes on until
the end of the line
or Friday
whichever comes first.

Dreadlocks
but no holiday.

Songs play on with
the words going wrong
it must be my age.

One supposes
composers
must be used
to it by now.

Shutting out the symptoms
but
I'd cut out the cancer if
I could.

You never know
until you do.

She is described in the silence between each drop of rain,
the cry of midwinter wanting
Summer again, in
the call of the eagles as they soar
high above
and the sonnets that poets have written
of love.