It has taken its time to come to it, the tree nearly
clean of leaves. With even a querulous wind,

something on it flurries into wing. How it must
happen: first, the leaves’ release, then the limbs’

paralysis, frost on the wizened trunk like pollen.
Then each thing keeping to itself. The house

an entire thought to itself. This morning I saw her
take a coffee can of seed to the feeder, so cold

that her breath seemed a ghost-face always
in front of her. In brown explosive handfuls

the birds disbanded. Her work took long minutes.
Step and step, the feeder’s lid removed, the can

aimed into it, then the steps back, the birds back,
the screen door slightly open, a dumb mouth.

In the afternoon, in the day’s one warm hour,
he was up on a ladder taking down storm windows,

hosing them down, the paste-white sky reflected
when he tipped each wet square a certain way.

The tufts of one glove waved in his back pocket.
The other lay on the grass. It was there long enough

for me to see their room darkened, the clothes
heaped, the white alp of a foot underneath a sheet.