Today, snow reduced the woods
to a palette wash of swift chickadees
and juncos, and the slower,
black-shadowed paddle of crows.
Their flights crossed the sky, fluid
as ink strokes brushed on a gray-cloud
canvas, and their shrinking voices
were the only sounds miles could find.
Perched abreast, in their winter-dress
drab, two cardinals posed on a near-frozen
branch. Then, from out of this scumbling
gradient world of blacks and whites and browns,
came a ladder-backed woodpecker,
weeping a shock of scarlet down
from its nape, like the first day courage
coaxed you to call my name and this heart home.