It has been eight years,
and I’ve yet to learn
the dialect of this land,
though I know now
the texture of snow,
the fine drift, the water-thick
flakes, the dart and dizzy
of ice caught in the deep
freeze, this is earth.
What I can’t speak
is the language of birds,
and my eyes,
growing dimmer each year,
have given up
on following the dart
and leap of the birds.
I do not know their names;
I will leave these winter days
with a grand illiteracy.
Still, I have allowed the quarrel
of moving birds to comfort me,
and on bright mornings,
I see a single bird, brown
and tipped in red, standing
still as ice on the porch railing.
There is something calming
in this, a prayer to light.