From WTP Vol. VI #1

All This Time
By Dina Elenbogen

It is true what you’ve said
about the birds    They have gone

invisible into winter
not south   just bowed

down in prayer
for lighter air

Some mornings everything becomes apparent
icicles turn from rain to rivers

When the ground unfreezes
they rise from their secret

places   rebuild the nests
they abandoned late fall

It is true   what you say   that all this time
they have been here

At dusk bald eagles prey
on city sculptures

You are so right    If we listen
to the stillness of winter

we can still hear
the birds

Dina Elenbogen is author of the memoir Drawn from Water (BkMK University of Missouri Press) and the poetry collection Apples of the Earth (Spuyten Duyvil, NY). Her work has appeared in anthologies such as City of the Big Shoulders (University of Iowa Press), Beyond Lament (Northwestern University press), Where We Find Ourselves (SUNYPress), and magazines and journals such as Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Bellevue Literary Review, Tikkun, and Paterson Literary Review. She earned an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago Graham School.