What the Sparrow Knows

Jennifer Miller

Bare branches become visible again

against a January sky—

the clarity of the day is harder than diamonds

and just as costly.

Nothing can hold fast the chariot of the sun

or turn his horses backward,

and so there is the necessity

of food and warmth and water—

I start with these.

All else vanishes but the tiny sparrow

picking out millet seeds,

who did not ask to be a bird,

but does not aspire to be something other

than her feathered essence.

Like all the great mystics,

this winged one teaches by example

and has no books to sell me.