Cold here too.
So cold that the Stellar’s bluejays were pecking at the window,
feathered eyebrows arched in disapproval.
Finally got food out to them. The feeding flurry was impressive —
bobbing and weaving like boxers,
they fanned their fine blue tails at each other,
vying for shiny sunflower seeds among the dross:
Let us eat cake, they say,
the chickadees can have the dregs.
The horses have grown their vestigial winter shag.
Now they are mini-mammoths steaming with an ancient fragrance.
The ghost-fox in their pasture has already turned pristine, mysterious white.
The prairie dogs hold onto each other standing sentinel, two-by-two, in the sun.
The weasels along the riverbank have made their move to monarchy,
wearing ermine cloaks Renaissance kings would kill for!
And, as I watch, magpies are ganging up on garbage
still stashed in the back of our truck,
too frozen to unload at the recycling center.
Opportunistic emperors, dressed in regal blue-black and white,
for them nothing is sacred, the world is their bazaar.
In the night there are strange behemoth murmurings.
The cabin, crotchety and kinked under four feet of snow
stretches, shifting in its winter’s sleep as the logs
settle even more firmly into place.
We are safe, like any denizens of hibernation,
curled, marsupial lives, tucked into drifts and wombs
of gentle, fearsome, freezing snow.
our own fur and tails and meaty breaths
warming each other—
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