My favorite place
is my grandmother’s deck
watching wraith-like birds
flit about with all the permanence
of pleasant dreams upon awakening.

My favorite time here is when it snows,
for when it snows it covers everything,
a pristine white canvas for hundreds of criss-crossed feet.
One could look at their hurried tracks and trails
and spend a lifetime speculating the whys and wheres.

How can one small creature possess so much energy?
Each generation comes as certainly as the cycles of the moon,
and will keep coming until the feeder is empty,
and the pine and maple are dead.

And on our deck we’ve seen it all,
while the leaves wax and wane on the ancient trees,
but there was never anything as heart-breaking
as when we saw a small life extinguish itself
on transparent death.

In this window I see many things, but most of all
I see the woman next to me, who finds such joy
in loving the nature that flies to her doorstep.
As for me, I find that joy
in loving her.