The Gift

http://www.birdforum.net

The reason I’m looking out the window

Is because dawn brings hungry birds to the feeder,

whole flocks of rosy finches,

a pair of ruby cardinals,

sky colored jays and red capped flickers,

an upside down nuthatch in its gray-blue cape,

chickadees with their black caps

pulled down around their ears.

And this morning, ten days before Christmas,

a gift – an albino finch, white as the grounded snow,

white as the shy ermine down by the pond,

white as a feathered angel,

its wings fluffed against the cold - 

stayed just long enough for me to see it,

to say Oh! and cast about for my camera.

Then something – caution, fright, a need to fly,

lifted its wings and flung it back into the sky

where white clouds waited to enfold it.