Window Study

Enough snow fell again to name this weather
winter. A thin white layer coats
every branch. My thoughts too hang
newly stark: how I’ve traded
fascination with spies’ lives for love
of moon and crows. Grown other
feathers, one might say, other spirals. I mistrust,
still, the metaphor of closet; to be ace
is to carry a decoy everywhere, assumed
full of secrets. A dossier or case. It weighs
almost nothing, like this dusting of snow,
like habit turned instinct. It holds
space named lack for lack of language,
but why should a self require decoding? I am
here like the hills, like the branches exposed  
when the breeze brushes away their cover.
Say forest or trees depending on how you want
to think. I let myself want nothing
but this gray dawn, crave an absence of labels
across which to trace new paths. Spies are found
vanishing in landscapes like this, and birds crying
the keen truths of their kind.