Where “shades of grey” acquires
esprit: slaty, dark-eyed,
sooty, dapper, hooded –
quick bits of dusk stitching fir
to birch to rock the boreal
embroidery.
All winter
they animate the understory, inscribing
runic ciphers in the snow
and discrete diacritical chips
along their flight paths.
One oriole,
it is said, can shift the heart
into its own outcry.
But it’s the juncos,
in their undertaker outfits,
who slip unnoticed into melancholy
smuggling minims of lift.
Bless them. They exit
with a wink, tail
snapping open like a card hand to reveal
white feathers at each edge:
Come spring
they’ll find the tallest spines of spruce
and trill the sun from one
saw-toothed horizon to the other.