Every morning is a storm.

From flat to full, the trees take on light

not fooled by winter’s freeze.

Here, says the owl.

I’m here again and so are you.

Life’s attendance list is long 

as the good calls out.

Some are as subtle as a breeze

only registered on a thread of hair 

uncovered by a cap.

Some are brazen in their own right:

the icicle softened and felled,

the rabbit’s less-than dart through white

on brown, brown on white

color clinging to where her footsteps braid. 

Blue Jays tend the nest

culled by last week’s fiery zephyr.

They won’t remember the wind or the culling.

They won’t remember the tuck of balsa-wood core under wing;

only the nest and the urge to keep going.

None of them work alone.

Neither owl nor wind,

not the tree, and not the creatures who burrow.

Not the Jays, or the worms, or the carrion.

They are never widowed by earth and sky,

or light and air.

And their flurry is greater when the sun is at the edge.