Winter Birds Poem by Caroline Misner

A cardinal and wren
twirl together among the branches
of an alder;

weeping pieces of winter
from branches bent and low
and burdened beneath boughs
encased in ice.

The winter, a sublime bully,
pushed itself onto the spindly limbs,
forced its body purposefully;

and here the ambivalent birds,
scrounging for seed,
know nothing of this, only
the glassy drops that twinkle

beneath the burnished sun.
It’s almost over; the crackling
earth weeps with joy;

the cardinal and wren see a patch
of that spongy earth gasping for breath
between cracks in the snow.