New Year

Last night something tunneled through the elms. But at sunrise, I found just white light biting my eyelids, salt rubbed on a wound. Batons of ice fell from power lines, soundless but still emphatic. Then the rain churned the snow to soap scum, waxing cars with winter’s lichen, patchy in the strange uneven fur of newborns. And still, I was childless. One cardinal lodged on a branch: a blood-drop striking water before the slow dispersion.