Weaver,
I like this poem a lot. The line about the ice cream is simply beautiful for reasons stated above And, I do agree with others about changing the question mark to a period in the last line.
Also, I really think you can delete lines 1 through 3. It almost sounds as if you're talking to yourself, except you wrote it down, before you started to write the poem. There's that loose connection of death in the poems you've read and your own but for me it was more distracting than anything else.
Luce
QUOTE (weaver @ Feb 6 16, 14:48 )
I sit down to write and end up
reading everyone else’s poems
about death, flowers and airborne dogs.
The wreath of birdseed I hung on the spruce
is gone, even the string that held it
although a circle of seed lies on the snow
in a pattern of bird and squirrel tracks.
Six blocks away a woman I know lies dying;
a violet in the snow. Last night she did not
eat her ice cream. Outside her window
a bird-feeder full, sits untouched.
I wonder if the birds who claimed
my wreath will migrate to where she lies -
if their feathers like petals will moult into spring?