Poems for Winter Wildlife
Although the landscape lies dormant under snow, some wild things neither leave nor sleep through these dreary months.
Peanut Butter Tree
Stripped of baubles, tinsel, lights it stands just outside the door dusted with snow plastered with peanut butter. Chickadees gorge to warm them through the night. They flutter 'round my hand one clings to my knife as I slather food on needles along knobby limbs. Hanging upside down they rock their heads to peer at me. Chipmunk ventures from her nest bounds across snowdrifts grabs chunks of peanut bits in her paws and cleans off several branches hardened by the cold dried in winter sun while birds twitch around her. The dog whimpers, watching As she preens fur and face Before dashing back home.
Seven layers of snow
lay outside the window footprints break through layers reveal birdseed strewn today and yesterday and the weeks before. Ice under powder over slush hoarfrost grows leafy crystals wind sculpts Easter Island heads or totem pole animals by the road New flakes fall like volcanic ash cover Pompeis of tree and bush Mice tunnel through catacombs between earth and ice tease cats and coyotes with their scratching. Chickadees pluck seeds found in footsteps cling upside-down to sip droplets from cornices that break through seven layers of snow.
If you enjoyed these poems, feel free to read more essays, poems, and stories in the Ring Around the Basin Archives.
I really enjoyed both poems, especially the first one with the chipmunk!
More than anything i realized birds and squirrels don't want to share anymore than most humans. I would watch them fight over the bird seed put in the feeder, knocking most of it to the ground. Then the grouse would come in to claim their share. Finally the deer would come and lick it up. Then a Black bear discovered it and ate everything. So I put it on a 10 pole of 2" water pipe. The bear came back and simply bent it over to the ground! So i gave up.