Dawn Potter: For David

           The world is blood-hot and personal
           Dawn says.


                   —Sylvia Plath, “Totem”
.

Look at this early-morning flock
of scraggly titmice, five or six birdlets hen-flocked

along the bare branches, feathers blown
inside out in the March wind, even crests blown

sideways, but every dime-weight body as firm on its feet
as Ozymandias. Their world is two feet

clinging to a twig, blood
racing against cold, blood

skittering in pinprick veins. The world is personal,
Dawn says. And what heart-scalded person

would think otherwise, what battered bird
would choose any other fate than bird?

Copyright 2022 Dawn Potter

Dawn Potter directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, held each summer at Robert Frost’s home in Franconia, New Hampshire. Her many books include Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook, 2022).