Inertia
Tracy Youngblom

Inertia

for once, too cold to eat: two
charcoal lumps of finch rest
on the feeder, drawn into
themselves, neither pecking
nor littering, eyes thinned to slits,
huddling in the weak rays
of a sun that can’t transmit
enough heat to soften. back
and forth they swing while
a squirrel in the background leaps
from frozen limb to frozen
limb, tail illuminated, lit up
and flailing in air so sharp
it could be glass about to shatter.

Tracy Youngblom

is the author of Growing Big: Poems, which was published in 2013. She was a 2014 finalist for the Loft-McKnight Awards in Poetry and a former Pushcart nominee. Her poems and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Wallace Stevens Journal, New York Quarterly, neat mag, Dogwood, Great River Review, Naugatuck River Review, Animal, and other magazines. She lives in the Minneapolis area with her husband, son, and a very spoiled dog named Maisie.