Not a baby bird

I’d been walking cross the mesa snow swathed in down and speckled wear, alone
And bathed by moonshine there in bare pastel
when I palmed the onion in my pocket. Basking in the shadowed cleft.
I tucked my head to my breast
like a mother-robin and smoothed the layered ruffs
On my scarved chest and on the onion skin,
waited for it to warm my palm,
beckoning a phantom pulse
Expecting it to beat.

But its globule one-pound started, pulseless,
Only rustled and shed flakes when my hand opened round the bud
To join in on the snowfall
The waveless and white
The waterless lake
To punctiliously fill a single foot print which I made
Despite which I’d still etched each step,
pressing the soft birch in parallel, hot-iron soles, taciturn brands
steaming depressions as neat as first stitches in a seamless quilt.
A thread-straight line abandoning trees for freelancing the aimless,
frameless terrain
With my
wrapped and
Nameless self, willing
The lifted onion to evaporate up-swirl behind my pace.