yester day
i counted more than 30 birds, here
first i kept a running list
then, a google doc to share

and i didn’t even know there was an organized
bird migration count
until after the fact

this morning,
it finally felt
vernal.
warm new air,
a gentle breeze
the exact kind of day to spot a fawn nested in the tall grasses around a mulberry or walnut tree
while her mother forages nearby

every one is being born today
every one is dying today

somewhere

it seems //

i can’t remember what it feels like to be a beloved daughter
i can’t remember what it feels like to be a loving daughter

now, repeat those sentences with the word mother instead of daughter

everything is drifting,
has drifted

everything thing is being pulled away,
has pulled away

the gravity of me is no longer enough
to hold these familiar bodies in orbit

in a system of we,
in a galaxy of us

we existed,

only on paper, i think.

but not kodak paper — you hated photos

//////

today,

on “World Migratory Bird Day”

the May Plow arrived even as every one is

gestating,
laboring,
birthing,
nesting,
laying,
nursing

birds, turtles, deer,
chipmunks,
turkeys,
geese and snakes

the timing of these men with their machines is so detached

from the cycle of life:

mothering,
laying,
arriving,
hatching,
latching,
nursing
feeding

raising and rearing.

the products of men with their machines are fertilized with phosphate, nitrogen, ammonia, urea
unironically sourced from the Fertile Crescent
shipped via the Strait of Hormuz
because their forefathers, not foremothers, strip-mined the soil of Turtle Island, barren, a hundred years or more, ago

so, happy and proud Semiquincentennial,
western european whitey!!

aka “American” ///

do you know that there are sod
“farmers” (the audacity)
pumping twelve hundred gallons of water per minute
and
burning through thousands of gallons of diesel fuel per week to grow rolls of green invasive lawn

for your new housing construction golf course subdivision that used to be forest or wetlands;

for the Obama Library concourse, along a golf course, which used to public parkland, which used to be World’s Fair grounds, which used be swampland and dunes and oak scrub and The fucking Lake!,

and for a golf course, in the desert ///

i buy bags of white and red clover seed
to patch this damned turf grass that i have cursed
and fought to reclaim for prairie for eight years, now

i pee in an old Cafe du Monde chicory can behind the barn
and hope
the coast guard helicopter
or prop-plane doesn’t low fly-over
mid-stream
this is immediate and regular fertilizer,
a soil amendment — that i alone supply

//////

on this second saturday in May preceding “Mothers’ Day” — “mothers’ day weekend”

there was a quietly-announced local niche seedling sale
an “if you know you know”
but imma tell every mother and motherfucker i know

and,
hey, mom, hey Jessie, what should i call you, now?

i wanted to tell you
i finally perfected
the creamy garlic salad dressing we loved and craved
from Addison Steakhouse,
or La Villa, or Mr. Steer, in chicago, the once-onion field

but you’re not here,
for me to tell
and you don’t know this poem exists

and you don’t even know to care

or care to know

that i write/wrote poems
or
prose
or
prose poems

so, i will keep looking for a fawn
nested in the grass.