The birds come back in their cries

over bauchy snow. Six a.m. light

carries the little stream from

the quarry melt faster & faster

past the empty bird-feeder

that waits for the child to fill it

from a jar bigger than her pot belly.

But she is still asleep, wrapped

like a new-born near her mother,

snoring like a soldier, dreaming

perhaps of the icy stream she

washes her doll in, to get her

ready for the king of the mountains

and the people in the purple sky

she sings about who say

“you should be grateful for what

we’ve done for you.”

I pad round the silent house,

the cold creeping into the

small of my back. I pick up

her drawings with their bug-eyes,

crowns, and feet on sideways.

“Is it fair to expect the truth

from a child?” she’d asked.

The silence is so constant 

it goes unnoticed. I hear as silence

one bird almost overhead calling

after the flock already in the pine-stand.

Everything is to be needed

less & less.