Listening Eye
by Bonnie Thurston
Ice is thick on deep snow.
Bluebirds shouldn’t be here
in this bitter season,
but execute intricate flight
in and out of the arms
of protective blue spruce.
They weave invisible patterns
known only to themselves.
Birds beneath the feeder
neither sink nor leave
their tiny, trident prints.
Absence of these hieroglyphics
is part of the lesson
of winter’s severe teacher
who invites us to learn
by the eye’s deeper listening
the long forgotten language
of moonlight on ice.
Bonnie Thurston resigned a chair and professorship in New Testament, after years as an academic, to live quietly in her home state of West Virginia. She is author or editor of nineteen theological works, has published five collections of poetry, and contributes to scholarly and popular periodicals. An internationally known Merton Scholar, her doctoral dissertation was one of the first on Thomas Merton. Thurston is an avid reader, gardener, cook, and lover of classical music.
blbthurston@gmail.com
Ice is thick on deep snow.
Bluebirds shouldn’t be here
in this bitter season,
but execute intricate flight
in and out of the arms
of protective blue spruce.
They weave invisible patterns
known only to themselves.
Birds beneath the feeder
neither sink nor leave
their tiny, trident prints.
Absence of these hieroglyphics
is part of the lesson
of winter’s severe teacher
who invites us to learn
by the eye’s deeper listening
the long forgotten language
of moonlight on ice.
Bonnie Thurston resigned a chair and professorship in New Testament, after years as an academic, to live quietly in her home state of West Virginia. She is author or editor of nineteen theological works, has published five collections of poetry, and contributes to scholarly and popular periodicals. An internationally known Merton Scholar, her doctoral dissertation was one of the first on Thomas Merton. Thurston is an avid reader, gardener, cook, and lover of classical music.
blbthurston@gmail.com
