Last night dipped into single digits:
slit sleeves of fresh snow clothing
branches immodestly, ethereal flakes
making that no-sound they fake hoping
to prove Newton wrong, the lean lawn
bench again porting its padded shoulders.
I need nothing more to move me along.
The recliner aligned with the
triptych’d windows anchors me
into whatever the day has to say:
Don’t go east, old man. Larry
was the saddest Stooge. Bread dough.
If I were you, I’d buy high, sell low,
just for the rhyme. If only your father
could see you now, he’d roll over
in his urn. In just a minute
a cat or two, tails straight as neon
snow stakes, will discover my perch,
fluff me like their personal pillow,
settle in toward their own afternoon.
                        

I’d have to get the handbook out
to identify the tiny bird scuttling
around the oak trunk by the back door.
So I don’t, and what’s the difference,
since you know whom I’m seeing—
plump ovoid, mostly globe the shape
of a downy tear, mostly brown, maybe
some yellow, some black and white,
always looking up even as it scrolls
down and across the ragged bark,
even as new snow sifts on a slant
into the ebony pinheads of its eyes.
And I said oak but would have to
look that up, too, if our deed didn’t
claim it and I hadn’t heard they cling
to those beige scraps flapping at me
as I sit here realizing I don’t know
much at all. Henry Thoreau would know
both, and I’m remembering he also knew
no difference between being committed
to a farm or the county jail. Emerson
could gladly commit to my home, too—
own the oaks and whatever other trees
I don’t know that surround me and
hold the birds and shield the deer.
I’d concentrate on reading Walden
and living off the grid like a friend’s
ex’s best friend who parked his van
in her front yard, plugged his TV
into her outside outlet, showed up
in time for family dinners so he could
decry committing to materialism.
If that bird on that oak had a choice,
could choose, I’d imagine he or she
(the exact coloring signifying which)
would stick to the avian grid, Thoreau
having also said that in his cabin he’d
caged himself among the wild birds.