Surprise Birds

The morning is cold
my car window frosted
in delicate patterns of ice
that half-asleep I scrape away

The sunlight is cold
the sun too far away
to do more than paint in gold
the edges of snow-white clouds

The ground is cold
the brown and yellow
of dead grass covered
in a thin dusting of pale frost

I have no love for the pale day
the bitter wind
that burns my cheeks with cold
demanding that I wake

when from the cold ground
in a flurry of black feathers
a flock of magpies rises
startling open my bleary eyes:

Surprise birds --
patterns of purest white
under black --

revealed only
in a wild flapping of wings
riding on the bitter wind
rising to meet the clouded sky

where the faraway sun
lights up the pattern
of their monochrome wings
and gilds their edges in the palest gold.