A tiny whiskered huntsman covers the wintry landscape

A roaring windblown leaf

Dusting across the hush

A no talk, all action mindset

This ermine remains contrastless

Wait.

Except for the pair of black beady eyes

Chased by a black-tipped, trailing tail,

An undulating bottle fly barely able

To keep up with the perpetrator

A heroin injected accordion, pistoning his way

Across the meditating snowflat

Vanishing into a mound of fieldstones

Prairie ghostlet so easy to miss

Was it all just a dream?

Then peak-a-boo, peak-a-boo, peak-a-boo

Shutter speed, rhythmic bobbing

Peering above ancient orange peel and lead gray lichens

In those split seconds, he is taking in more of you

Than you of him

Designed beyond your comprehension.

A miniature lighthouse scanning

That one second, seems an eternity to him

Milliseconds to most

Blasting headfirst, dashing towards buffaloberry patch

Head cocked, surveying the base, then scaling up

Up within the monkey-bars of branches and thorns

Disappearing

Into desiccated sage leaves and glossy red berries

Then all too soon, nonchalantly

Reappears, drops to the ground

With a puffy sparrow body still in torpor

To never wake again.

Bounding four by four tracks now disfigured in the snow

With new found package, and a crimson trace

Just three lonely specks on single snow granules

Enough to reveal sure death

For a sparrow only contains so many specks.

Ol’ short-tail continues his frozen prairie traverse

Bounds higher pitched with more purchase

But less efficient—still ping-ponging

Proud chin held high

Straining to see through the faceful

Of minute feathers

With every inhaled breath avian-flavored

Enough to elicit a tiny weasel mouth

To salivate profusely

Need to get to dining safety now

Eventually diving sparrow first

Into his secret lair

Gone.

Now only your thoughts remain

Numbed by the simple breath of the frozen wind

Whispered through the lonely ice-glazed grasses.