Winter Windsport

Loping along
snowshoes leaving
a lazily tufted trail
the sky like curdled milk
wind cradling clouds
    water crystals
shimmer rainbow colours
on our frozen eyelids.

We slide the slope 
     of a hill
stippled with cedar seedlings
parent trees nearby
tall and symmetrical
aromatic fragrance
heating the chill air.

No birds this
Arctic day    yet
the unmistakable sign
of an apocryphal bird.
Foursquare in the 
centre of a naked Hawthorn
     a birdsnest

shaped of the same
dark thorny branches.
     peering inside
we see the glowing perfect
ellipsoid of a white snowegg
the wind has whipped within.