For a Life Half Spent in Strange Lands

I have seen. These eyes have seen
A dirt road, a blue-grey moon

Dull on the snow of a page
Cut with bird-toed tracks of print.

How much have you seen that was
What you saw when you looked up

From a book wedged in your lap?
How much have you heard, smelled, felt

That was just what the small birds
Who left those tracks on their way

To what birds care for more—song,
Seeds, eggs, nests, a look-out perch—

Did not mean for you to know?
It’s not the tracks—it’s the snow.