Bird In The Wind

All I've managed to do today,
the day of the blizzard
when I stayed home from work
and slept until 11:30 in the morning,
is put sunflower seeds in the feeders
because I saw a single female cardinal
sheltering on one of them, her back to
the feeder, making herself small for the wind
to have less to ravage. Seeds are calorie dense
and calories are heat, so now others have come.
I see three cardinal pairs, chickadees, others
I cannot name, hear a bluejay's distinctive call
and the wind blowing on and on pushing
a continuous rolling wave of snow.

I'm trying to think forward since
accomplishing anything today seems out of the question,
the wind is making the prospect of shoveling painful and futile,
and on days like this I usually think backward

And by that I mean I am trying not to rummage through
memories because standing by the side of that grave
long enough looking down, well, it becomes me I see in
that hole in the ground.

What I did wrong was to twist Love
into the shape of her name - a mistake
because, although loved
She is not Love

But you believe it easily by repeating the association of Love
with her name, her eyes, her kiss, her sleeping body, her thick black hair
and with her memories, given to you in such a way
that they now feel like your own.

You can very easily confuse this feeling,
these memories, this world
with that woman, the real one,
who no longer has time for you.

My thoughts walk me again
around the edges of the cemetery
while something else quietly begins
watching for a gate

The time will come when my duties to this
observance are met, when I have unravelled
and untwisted her name from Love.
That day will come.

On that day, I will lay this heart,
swollen with the entirety of that world,
at the Angel's feet and walk away,
Yellow Girl.