Glaring like a field
covered with new snow,
this incipient page waits
for my typed letters
to alight
like raucous grackles,
foraging, finding
no tender shoots,
no easy meal.
These are hard times
for those who stay close to home
never winging it
to southern lands,
these dedicated black birds,
scratching the page
for another metaphor.
Survival here is measured
in image and rhythm,
in nascent
white space.
(9 Dec. 2010)
