Hope

Winter sunlight, fool's gold, pours in the south window,

fails to warm. Weak as tea, pale as bone, insubstantial

as dust on a mantle, water falling over stone.

The ground outside, hard, white as the hospital bed

where my friend waits after her marrow transplant,

hoping her white count will rise. I watch birds at the window—

sparrows, titmice, finches—the plain brown, the speckled,

the ordinary, no flashy travelers up from the tropics,

where winter is a verb, not a state of the heart.

I go out to fill the feeder, feel silky grain slip

through my fingers: millet, proso, corn. Little birds,

little angels, singing their small song of consolation.

A thin drizzle of sun slips through clouds,

a strand of hope against the icy odds.