(Matthew 8:19-20)*

We get up at six with him an build a fire.
         Against a choir of straight second-growth woods
         on a morning when the thermometer stands
at zero, he considers the birds of the air.

They hop down and again hop down to the feeder
         beyond the window for the black sunflower seeds
         or the suet’s white shoulder, a traffic of chickadees
to which cardinals and pine grosbeaks add color.

His man-in-the-moon face, his eyes of cracked sapphire
         reflect necessity in that repeated
         motion. An infant gazes at some birds,
and for a moment it all balances there,

unblinking, calm, until the slightest feather
         of snow, knocked free by a breeze, drifts toward
         the ground, past curtains hospitably patterned
in red and blue chintz pineapples: mute glitter,

crystal fusillade. He will have nowhere
         to lay his head, no matter how he builds,
         no matter how he watches where unnumbered
small creatures have their being in the weather.



*Matthew 8:19-20
19) Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
20) Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”