Signs

In January, day breaks like stone
splitting from stone.
I’m consoled by the red head

of the red-bellied woodpecker,
flashing like an ambulance
among the drab, ravenous sparrows.

Later, driving on Old River Road,
I’m startled to see two great blue herons
paused on islands of ice

amid black pools of open water—
the winter order shaken.
I want to pull over, but it seems

a little reckless, or just odd,
to brake for herons along a snowbank.
On my life list

is the indigo bunting,
seen once in a summer long past.
Sunlight burst

against the blue gem of its body,
on a wire above a vacant lot,
a sign of not a thing.