the rain starts
then pummels
birds descend from their roosts in trees
they’d already abandoned feeders, baths, meadows and prairies
now queuing one by one
down into the bramble
grounding themselves
without air traffic controller directives and guidance
from the torrent of wind and rain
and possibly, hail

// how have i never noticed this procession/
this choreographed safety dance to firmament //

those manicured landscapes, lawns, shrubs
the “smithification” & “kleinschmidtification”
the topiarification,
the modernization,
the suburbanization,
then re-gentrification
— those perfectly clean lines of uniformity
and complicity,
their kempt lawns
and unbroken windows-theory obedience
to property values
none of that offers true shelter

nor do the hospitals, schools, mosques, designated safe zones, “humanitarian” airdrops on beaches ///

there is nothing in this natural or built World that escapes comparison to Gaza, right now,

not even native or migratory bird behavior observed during storms in Bucolia, America

light overcoming darkness
on half the sphere’s horizon
but no where else

the Sun shining a bit longer
on death
by war and famine and violence
each day now

the sphere of power willfully deluminating
our screens, the world, our souls

curating our light and dark, a false, distorted, disorienting equinox

that’s only half of it

we close our eyes to it

we go to the cinema
we wear darker sunglasses
we look eternally west instead of east
we put a ballot into a black hole, and
pretend sunshine might escape, emerge from it

the red-winged black birds
brown-headed cowbirds
starlings
& common grackles are here
roosting in old elm and black walnut trees
talking,
singing
by the way,
they are not common-looking:
their head feathers are a gorgeous
iridescent peacock blue
of course the Crows are here:
they live here

by the way,

i am making a black walnut banana bread
with overripened bananas

i can’t not eat these 3 bananas, somehow;

i cannot give them up to compost, or set them out for possums, raccoons this time / i have to eat them, use them, myself — right this minute

i insist //

have you seen the children’s rib cages, eye sockets, skulls, their femurs

i saw the same emaciation, wasting of my friend’s body / stage 4 metastatic cancer / it was my first time seeing starvation up close and personal

but this is not cellular cancer.

there is a known cure! //

what a strange modern creature
she is
wholly without ambition
this is not to say,
without competition
or without temptation to unfollow her path

she became so perplexingly contented,
in her own self, so grounded in herself, nearly buried

that she simply forgot she was actually vulnerable, alive and living

there were times, few, when others,
almost always men, offered or lured
her a temporary or false loft, telling her things about herself she already knew

validation is one helluva drug

and she had emanated a buoyancy, a life raft for lost souls, for arrested seekers /
a maiden’s heel in her, that she despised
she latching onto their empty breast, for some external re-nourishment
but they were hollowed out and filled in with ego, lies or greed

wholly devoid of the rich blood of life
their milk, bland, defective or impotent

while allowing their needy suckle to drain and diminish her ////

i wake up pre-dawn
and light a candle

the wind, pristine and strong,
whistling cold through an opened window
my preferred lullaby for a few hours more

i wake again,
this time, my home revolving into the
ancient light

and to familiar jurassic sounds
vocalizations of sandhill cranes

my bed is warmed by vintage wool and living fur
/ like my ancestors, sort of /