Bird Feeder

Strange cuneiform, these bird tracks in the snow.
I read the message on my window ledge
And think how winter treats the sparrow
Who’s taken shelter in a cedar hedge.
He and all his nervous company
Can only know the hunger and the death
That lingers with this blue transforming snow.
The god descends in clouds of human breath
And from a breadbox flings a spree
Of crusts and crumbs as if a yearly fee
For some small service rendered long ago.

I’ve spread the bounty which is waste to me
And sit behind a foggy windowpane
To watch them test my brief divinity.
The snow is blonde with summer’s precious grain.
One, the leader, or the hungriest,
Perches in an apple-tree, then flutters down;
A track of tiny tridents marks the snow.
A cloud of powder, brilliant thistledown,
Is shaken from the upper boughs by all the rest
Who wait to see if anything molest
The scout who dares the perils down below.

The gestures of a god are serious
To such as these; though gods enjoy this game
Of hide and seek, or simply curious,
A kindness done for neither praise nor blame,
Wait to see the outcome of their deed;
These must risk their lives in earnest for a crumb.
Having weighed my slight munificence,
Two by two, they warily succumb.
I note the fierce intensity with which they fee,
And see in them the makings of a creed
Who’d greet my gesture, Great Significance.


The Gesture, by Patrick White


In fairness, I should point out that it is my wife, not me, who "descends in clouds of human breath" and feeds the birds around our house. Also, this is not a sparrow, but a chickadee. And it came down out of a spruce tree. 

Other than that the poem is pretty spot on.