Alive and Well

Don’t fill the kitchen pot
with husks and nutshells,
nor wear the gunny sack of
poverty of spirit, nor cut
paper dolls from the daily press
to prove you are upset.
Cold and snow may bury the yard
with sleeping drifts but this
won’t starve the cocky sparrows.
Days tick off on the season’s
slow clock but we tell time by
an evening’s fire and the door
we opened for a starving kitten
on a naked afternoon. There may be
a lesson in the endurance of roots
but let us be thankful
their long sleep is not our habit.