It's winter's end, and no matter how long and cold, there are incipient signs of spring.

This is the birth time
for some of us.
We were quivering new
buffeted by rough gales,
as torn clouds stampede
through steel gray skies,
the sedge is
shattered, yellow,
snow lies north
but the birds
sing sing sing
staking claims
on the bare bones of the
brutalized sleeping
trees, there is
sickness--coughs, flu--
this isn’t a safe time
to be born.

But there are marvels, too.
This year Pine Siskins
had a party in our town,
outnumbering the finches,
a chorus of sweet song.
And it is wild wind and snow
goose time, those
intrepid travelers resting
before the last haul to the
Arctic, an ecstatic fantasia
when you stand among
thirty thousand white birds,
a congregation shouting
Glory to God in the Highest.