fawn

On May 9, 2026May 15, 2026 By ©️K.T. 2026In agraria, anthropocene, autobiographical, Birth, Chicago, confessional, confessional poetry, Crone, crone chronicles, Crone Consciousness, death and other endings, deer, dirt road chronicles, earthlings, ecocide, fauna, from the inner city to outer rural, heartbreak, maternity, May, Mother, Mother's Day, Motherhood, nostalgia, Poem, poet, poetry, ruralia, timeLeave a comment

yester day
i counted more than 30 species of birds, here
first, i kept a running list in my head
then, i made a google doc to share

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

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

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

every 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 on kodak paper — you hated photos, and you taught me to them too///

today,

on “World Migratory Bird Day”

the May Plow arrived even as every one is

gestating,
laboring,
birthing,
nesting,
laying,

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

the timing of these men with their machines is so detached

from the cycle of Earthen life:

mothering,
arriving,
hatching,
latching,
nursing
feeding

raising and rearing.

protecting.

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

you manifested your destiny !!

so,

happy-and-proud Semiquincentennial,
dear western european Whitey ////

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 invasive and needy green lawn

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

for the Obama Presidential Museum concourse — also along a golf course, which used to be entirely 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 fucking desert /////

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

i pee outside in an old Cafe du Monde chicory coffee can behind the barn
and hope
that a coast guard helicopter
or prop-plane doesn’t fly-over too low
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
that creamy garlic salad dressing we loved and craved
from Addison Steakhouse,
or La Villa, or Mr. Steer, in Chicago, a once- wild onion field

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

and you don’t even care to know,

and worse, Jess, you don’t even know to care

that i write/wrote poems
or
prose
or
prose poems

you manifested,

and you lost every one,

and you lost me –

your only child.

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

this mother’s day weekend

instead of

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My Great Grandmother Survived “The Great Tri-State Tornado” of 1925 – the deadliest tornado in U.S. history

On March 26, 2025February 6, 2026 By ©️K.T. 2026In autobiographical, biographical, childhood, Crone, Family, grandmother, Mother, tornadoLeave a comment

The 100 Year Anniversary of The Great Tri-State Tornado

revised 2025 first published May 2011

The author, a baby, being held by her maternal great grandmother

Seeing the footage, videos and photos of splintered trees, the rubble of homes, first responders and devastated people — and hearing of the rising tolls of the injured, missing and dead and imagining the immense pain of all the fractured families — especially in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and in Joplin, Missouri — it is all the more remarkable to me that my great grandmother, Mable Agnes Brantley, then just one day shy of her 18th birthday, and her soon-to-be husband, Harry T. Ruble, survived the 1925 “Tri-State” tornado.

That tornado devastated the town of Murphysboro in Jackson County in Southern Illinois. It remains the DEADLIEST tornado in U.S. history to date: an F5 on the Fujita Scale — nearly 700 people died — but it is also infamous for its duration, sustained speed, length and breadth!

Mable Brantley would go on to have a full life, to raise children during the Great Depression, to work outside the home before and during the War Effort and for decades after — and more importantly, to help to raise her grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great, great grandchildren. Continue reading “My Great Grandmother Survived “The Great Tri-State Tornado” of 1925 – the deadliest tornado in U.S. history” →

waiting for the bough to break

On December 6, 2024November 3, 2025 By ©️K.T. 2026In author, autobiographical, crone chronicles, death and other endings, december, dirt road chronicles, earthlings, endings, Essay, flora, Gaza, Genocide, grief, kin, Life and Death, liminality, mortality, Palestine, plant beings, Reverence, threshold, time, Tree, Trees, writerLeave a comment

i am waiting for the bough to break — or, to be severed by proxy at my behest.

earlier this week on my daily walk-about, i noticed that a primary limb, the major artery, on a nearly 80’ tall and likely nearing 100 years-old, elm tree on the land i occupy, had cleaved and that the fracture was migrating down into the trunk — and dangerously so.

i don’t know the cause: if it was the abrupt shift in temperature to freezing here in southwest Michigan — or, if the tree was stressed from a standing-water-wet spring followed by a very dry summer, or if “it” is simply at the end of their life — all the elms here had unusually held onto an abundance of their prolific leaves until the fourth week of November.

no matter.

the matters:

the massive limb of the elm stretches high and precariously over the old barn, and depending on the wind direction, there’s a chance if it falls, it could clip the back of my house or take the whole tree down with it.

i await the tree surgery & removal crew. i am at their and the northerly and westerly gusts’ mercy.

in the meantime, i have also been wrestling with the possible choice of whether to have the crew amputate just the cleaved limbs — if the tree is in fact salvageable — or, to remove the entire tree at once instead of forestalling the inevitable.

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