Vespers SPARROWS Morning after first snow— outside my kitchen window, gray sparrows flap up and down on a sagging clothesline. It is a corn dance in honor of sunshine on snow. What joy in a sparrow’s body as he jumps and eats— a world of red barns, snow, old clotheslines and corn kernels is enough. No brooding on hunger and death, no suspicion among the sparrows. I return from seeing a woman, full of joy and dancing in my body— lie awake all night putting away old dreams like a man packing for a long trip. Now it is clear: her face come to me, and I sink into sleep like childhood, rising hours later to bright sun, sparrows dancing on the clothesline. In a world of grief, no one has any right to such gifts as I am given; I take them, put on my feathers, and go dance in the snow.
GUSTAVUS QUARTERLY | WINTER 2021
—Bill Holm ’65
44
from The Dead Get By With Everything (Milkweed Editions, 1991)
