yesterday, the woods under an overcast sky—
bare oaks, dead grass. The sensation you were
inside a sepia-tinted photo. Remember
the single swatch of green, unfallen leaves
on the invasive buckthorn bush. The only blue,
a jay screeching from a high branch.

Remember how your dad said there weren’t
as many birds now as there used to be.
Ah, you thought then, it’s just that he can’t
hear them any more. But now you wonder

if he was right. In the stacks of paintings
he left behind, there are blue jays,
meadowlarks and waxwings.
When you brought pictures to brighten
his drab room, it was the birds he wanted.
After he died, you saw a waxwing,
just one, elegant among late-summer leaves.

Remember the woods yesterday, sparrows
beside the path (or warblers—something brown
and little). When you circled back
to where you entered, your tracks were gone,
snow-dusted. Fresh deer prints
crossed the trail.