Annunciation
Suzanne E. Berger
| poetry
In evergreens gravid with snow,
the red startles, a sudden flare--
you see
the rounded wind of bird, an exhalation,
before the bird itself
drenched in after-color:
then a beak plunging
into a bowl of bushy snow.
Cardinal given
like a sign that Gabriel gave--
flight substantiated to flesh.
Did the bird come arrived, not born
riding air
in stuttered arcs
beating at the glassy core
of dread
to shatter it--
to break the winter darkness.
Suzanne E. Berger was born in Texas and raised in Ohio. She is the author of These Rooms (Penmaen Press), Legacies (Alice James), and Horizontal Woman (Houghton Mifflin). She has won a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an EDI for her memoir. She has taught at the Radcliffe Institute, Lesley Seminars, and now runs an advanced poetry writing workshop independently.