Psalm of Robins

A hearty winter psalm, the redbreast robins work 

the holly tree from misty base camps in the wood 

across the street. They disappear into the green 

to pop out one by one and cut through icy air 

en route to comrades waiting in the naked sticks. 

And aren’t redbreasts thought to be a sign of spring? 



Disturbing all the new-dropped snow, the branches spring 

their badly-camouflaged brigades. Today, the work 

of man is complicated by a slush that sticks 

to everything, including cords of firewood 

left stacked beneath the vagaries of the open air. 

Neglect and reckoning. And still, the evergreen, 



resplendent in its alb, convenes a wintergreen 

communion. Slings the laity. A constant spring 

of russet softballs, the preliminary air- 

support for April’s landing party, sets to work 

across the wires. It flips to dodging patterns that would 

throw the errant angels earthward as it sticks 



to spearfish diving. Crimson fruit, the sticks 

and brambles, snow and sunlight complement the green 

Cathedral of the Mistletoe. The ice and wood 

will be here in the morning. Set the spring 

of winter’s clock to wind as slowly and to work 

as unpredictably as cloudlines in the air. 



They’re everywhere, endowing the suburban air 

with Hitchcock premonition. Here’s a scene that sticks 

with you and draws you in. Inspired by the work 

of Bruegel and Hieronymus—the devil’s green, 

a pastorale of grey and white—these songs that spring 

across the lawn have sketchy harmonies, a wood 



ensemble hitting strings and tympani with wood 

and wind that lift the redbreast to its hectic air. 

Survival. To a resurrection at the dawn of spring 

as in its transit from the holly to the sticks, 

it comes to light upon a crucifix. The green- 

sward is a mirror of the heavens now, the work 



of a capricious God, a work of frozen wood. 

The swelling in the green will flutter in the air 

as, tentative, the sticks hold out a prayer for spring.

From February, 2008

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