The dawn was pecking away at its egg in the east
and night's skirts were withdrawing westward,
dark hems snagging at the roots of trees
to leave draggled shreds of shadow
striping the morning meadows.

The air was a clear pool of expectation
into which,
inevitably,
one bird dropped
a single, seed-crystal note.

Growing like frost,
this note begot two,
ten,
a thousand,
to become a dawn chorus of ice-gemmed sound,
a crystalline tree thrusting upward to touch
a lone high-hawk,
hovering
upon the forehead of the morning.

-the visitor