Purple Finches and politicians

*

*

*

I was walking a morning road,
rainy wind shadows, January trees.
Warm clouds scurfing up from the South again.
Yet this is not a lasting thaw.
Two months from now snow will fall.

Election year, the big talkers are talking
wasting millions every day, proclaiming
change—our deepest desire, and need
for centuries, we keep swallowing
the same baited hook:
“I’m the one who’ll deliver you!”
Since bedtime storybooks, we keep craving
impossible myths. They help us sleep.
They make us dream. 

This, the first morning Purple Finches
are warbling again, a stream of sweet lyrics
spilling on the soft wind: cadences
sparkling, like sunlit ice breaking
high in the Maple limbs.
They know the earth is turning back again
to the warm light of a star.

*

*

–Quilla

“Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who can not save” –Psalm 146: 3“