Thick with wings

I watched the yearning creek run,
the land lying damp and still
under a dull sky, and stepped softly
across the leaf-strewn earth.

Two winter-bleached trees
were suddenly thick with wings,
as if leafed out in a
shimmering Spring,

and they were singing —
a flock of red-wing blackbirds
filled the baskets
of their bony branches

and the chorus of reedy, raucous,
red-shouldered joy
seemed to call the sun
out from the shrouded sky —

slanting, glorious, brilliant rays shot
from behind the blues and greys,
and all things — the wet stones,
the bark, the flattened grasses,

the wide sky itself —
on an otherwise heartless late winter day,
were torched with golden fire
and for a moment the world sang.