Snow, Snake, Snow, Birds, Sickness, Sitting

So many, maybe millions No, billions. Trillions? Of stars, a quiet, hot snowfall of white stars; sandal season squall. Each birch tree here outdoing January's record accumulation. Weeks of hour after hour after hour upon day upon day upon day of birches' burstings into snow tears seed of children as-yet unrooted, unsown, ungrown, unknown. A snake came to discard its boundaries- Rubbing against me for some many minutes. Trusting and patient; or...oblivious to time and me Then? A bluebird who seemed to Steal the Sky and carry it in her feathers. So much so that looking up I was shown only gray- Gray piled on grey, and here only this bird shone. Then a woodpecker- her red neck spot a singular cinnabar blot a calligrapher's littler chop drop a dalliance in dun a dalliance with joy! Otherwise grey with white streaks bordered in black. She landed too. Beside me in purported meditation. I mean, if I had been successful at the measureless practice I'd not've remembered what I'd been there to do. There by the Spruce, there by the altar to unseen faeries, in crying distance of The Grieving Tree, a yellow willow a-weep. And then, the third day, I sat- convinced of my path and this need to sit there, on that Way, trying to do better, to do less, to be better, to be less. So I sat, convinced of the rarity: The snake come to slough her skin and rub alongside my leg where it met and nested and nestled my foot. Both died, or so it seemed. The Buddhist snake- Given new life, ouroborous of life, after shuffling off its mortal matte coil. The woodpecker, from nest to laid-to-rest Now lay, an offering, on altar stone. I say both but it was three- the Skybird too! Dead of thievery. Dead and witnessed by Third Eye, this third "Why?!?!" And so I? I cried and I I sat. So I sat- weeping with tree, weeping for she. For the bluebird died too! There where the snake came, there where the noisy-billed'd be. She stole and savored the Sky and Came to roost with this guy. And by that same leg, with not one single chirp, arrested her motion and toppled over brushing my leg with a blueSky wing under a darkening, darkening, blackening, sky. So I sat. And then. So I sat and then... This fourth day alone, beside faerie stone A barred owl came down- afraid not of Death. Afraid not of Life. I was neither surprised or amazed. So I sat. And sat. And yes. This owl then passed. Just as the last came to their last in ev'ry each day passed This owl then passed. Dark eyes went hollow. Lids slipped over soul. Fluttered up like a helium dream Six-foot up and then, suspend! In no hurry to melt into Earth, and no hurry to dissolve into Heaven.