A Bird's Desire

The perfect orb of the sun gleams
wanly silver through the pewter
haze of the winter sky, reflecting
the silver-white carapace of the
landscape below, on a truly lovely day,
beloved of all nature's creatures. A
gentle breeze moves on the still,
chill air swirling and twisting a
delicate feather, finally resting on
the frozen forest floor. Its tender
fragility sits as light as a bird's wish
to see spring, an exquisite ornament
on the snow pack. Another, and another
float sweetly from heights above. And
there, indeed high above, a small
raptor sits in the crotch of a bough.
On this blissfully lovely day under
a late-winter sun sailing in a silver sky
over a white landscape stippled
with dark tree trunks and their
bare, lofty spires is a kestrel. Its prey
a hapless chickadee firmly grasped
in pitiless talons, downy feathers
plucked, to float below. Expiring
in an agony of nature's infallible 
existential design, this perfect winter 
day the scene of the serene crime.