Yesterday I photographed her when she came for breakfast,
her plumage fluffed up against the day’s sharp cold,
and thought how a certain tenderness rose inside me
at the sight of her subtle colors. She, whose mate
is so flamboyantly red, is the modest one of the pair.
Today, a sudden wind hurled her against my window pane
and she fell, dead, beneath it. In the blowing snow
I gathered her soft body and found a protected place
for her beneath the ancient spruce I call The Guardian.
What a terrible emptiness it leaves inside us
when a dear one goes.