Sun Lances On Ice

The sun lazing in the afternoon sky
creates daggers of light glancing
off branches sheathed in ice
sparking and sparkling on the
landscape of trees' bare branches
on a mid December day of 
brittle cold where nuthatches and
chickadees flit their tiny, nervous
presence in search of minuscule
evergreen seeds, Hawthorne haws,
cocoons.  The forest floor has
disappeared under a glistening
snow-and-ice-crystal carpet
coating fallen rotting trunks and
stumps veneered in sheer ice.  A
scarlet cardinal settles like a 
blaze of independent fire on
a darkly glittering limb.  Wind
has hastened the presence of a
fluffy white flock of clouds to
browse on the blue meadow until
those heavenly sheep become so
numerous they obscure the sun.