When snow covers the azaleas
with its hoary wisdom,
and our terra cotta pots
wear white hats of surrender,
and sparrows puff up
dreadfully in the cedar
against the cold, I pull on
my dead father’s hunting jacket
and step from the room of language
with its beautiful, treacherous
human motives into silence
cold enough to kill me,
frostbite so quick it whittles all
to a fierce will to live.
Standing here in the frozen chamber
of a sparrow’s mind, I can hear
someone in the room of language:
May these sunflower seeds
ignite the sun in them.
May these sparrows be like lanterns
that light their own way home.