puppet

birdsong echoes across out-of-place snow,
sparrow waking cold to the chill of bowed limbs
held tight to ground
with arch of frozen white, caught mid-fall
and full winter

captured branches waiting
for tenuous breaths of morning
to warm what the night made of green,
to scissor-melt these fragile strings
and weave a net of soft water sound
to cast into the clouds,
bringing back the steady patter of spring.


healing rain to mend broken bark--
shatter snap of freezing melt,
where the drips hang frozen in the space of yesterday,
reflecting where spring had found her perch
only briefly;

moments of heat and green glossed over
by the temperament of a single sparkling storm,
giving dawn something spectacular to break across
for perhaps the last time
this season.


--
Title is prompt, as is the storm that brought over eight inches of snow when just two days ago I was getting sunburned in the 70 degree heat. The three am backyard was like something out of faerie: bright enough to read by, pure white sky and muffled silence, the branches large and heavy with white, and the tickling of feathery snow falling gently on my face.