Poem: Three Birdhouses

What the sellers left behind:

three handmade wooden birdhouses,

a flat, painted stone, the grime

of an upended bucket, wild bushes,

a leering gnome and a wind chime.

What winter left behind:

the crisp-crunch of tawny leaves

and damp of thawing soil in

spaces within sunlight’s reach,

under shade’s spring recoil.