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 any 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 with 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 /
this was 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 life force ////

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 /

he’s visited me three times, now
the first time in over a dozen years
i am glad to see him

her visits make more sense
it’s only been
october to november,
november to december
december to …
four and a half months

well,
this doesn’t bode
well

i leave a coin on my dresser
in front of a foto of him
i challenge him to flip the coin

i situate the silver bell on my nightstand
nearer to a photo of her
i challenge her to ring the bell

i think about pulling a card

not yet. not yet.

the black flies
and ladybugs of these
warming winters
droves sounds dramatic
but dozens, hundreds of each hatching
in the southern windows
boxelder bugs too
not amityville horror-level
i know now that was bullshit,
no evil entity need exist (save for my kind)
all old country houses are nurseries for
insecta

gutted the bathroom and found
1000 black walnuts beneath the tub
and later, inside the kitchen doorway lintel,
a red squirrel’s deep nest, convenient, efficient
all old country houses are potential residence for rodentia

absent humans (my kind)
abandoned for a year or two,
the wild begins to reclaim

and who doesn’t want in, after all?

i did, i wanted in
found myself let in, found my own way in — or
what does it really matter.
i was in.

she negotiated her mortality
prematurely

suddenly, but not unexpectedly

the many days over 30 years
she imagined or wished herself gone
she wears like a scarlet letter,
better a moss green letter, a french blue one

A for Agony
A for Asshole
A for “A”, school girl, good girl
A for Antigone
A for Anam

the tears, wasted and years, squandered
tethering her to expectations of men and mothers
to shame and insignificance
to dumb successes and false failures