After the woodcut by Judith Elisabeth de Haan
The curiously named meisboller – miceballs
look like the small, red chested birds
which are eating them this winter morning.
Both have breasts bright as traffic lights,
all are hanging like christmas lanterns
inside a maze of thin birch branches.
The four birds, four meisboller, glow
like the tips of cigars in winter
as eight friends walk up a country road
where they might see inside the wood
acrobat birds who flutter, land and hang,
then dangle to eat, claws steadying
the swinging food of golf ball fat
someone kindly left, a gift
in a tangle of cross hatch branches.