An old, blue-eyed nun sits with her hands in
her lap of that too-large black wool robe tied
with a braided rope dangling piously
from her waist like two thin, dangerous snakes
with frayed heads that end in a thousand tongues.
She lifts thin-skinned hands to adjust glasses
that slide back down her nose while she re-sleeps.
These tropical birds chirp the spring with their
yellow breasts, orange bills and black-ringed faces.
Twenty birds in a small enclosure sing
while snow falls and fills in the parking lot
and covers my car. When I leave there will
be a square of clean concrete underneath.
Snow rests in the pine trees outside like clean
cotton shawls. Only this is wild—this snow
that we see through the windows. And they all
mark winter with it. Pots of coffee and
television, holiday visits, when the
laundry comes, and too-small glasses of juice.
These people whose present is linked with their
past through photos, through repeated phrases.
Their present and mine now convalescing.
Their smiles at the child knocking on the birds’
glass cage are lonely on this dark Sunday,
and the fireplace near us is empty
on this short January afternoon.
This cold day that is perfect for a fire.
Paul Wiegel is a Green Bay native and now writes from his home near the upper Fox River in Wisconsin. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The English Journal, Riverbabble, Hermeneutic Chaos Journal, and Hummingbird. He is the 2015 winner of the John Gahagan Poetry Prize.