A Cutting

Patience can be wistful,
Pragmatic intelligence,
Given winter's tmesis.
Tiny slices of pulses,
Hearts of house finches
Inside split-log piles
Under icicled picnic
Tables glazed solid
With frozen seeds, fit
Neatly past cracks,
Pecking bits of before
And what could be
Construed as not
After but possibly
Later, maybe later.