The Nature of Winter

She  comes, wing-span fanning the trees’

gap, belly a-ghost of twilight and snow:

tall dark shivering in the offing

gathers to smother the living, the land,

while she of the heart-face stands to a hover,

feather-flap slow to roll on still air holding

a pitch of night  - it clutches the clipped

moon, ice crawling through twigs.

Her black eyes angle on white,

talons flared, tense for a flicker of shrew

or vole on the clamped hummock below,

beak snipping on clean space,

dropping for death, all of her moment

mute. A snatch, a turn, wing-back fancy

in pinched light, she flows, flits

to a mote where it’s bleak, raw on the edge.