Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
but still, two of the four barn swallow nestlings were ready to fledge, and did,
this morning
Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
but still, i washed the hummingbird feeders meticulously with bottle brushes, as if they were my own once-baby-son’s bottles, and filled them with fresh, sugared well water,
this morning
Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
but still, i tried to stake the seven foot,
no eight foot, tall hollyhocks, bent over by overnight wind gusts,
this morning
Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
but still, Israel was committed to its holocaust of Gaza,
this morning
Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
and i earnestly searched reddit for military opinions about possible conscription of our young people,
both this morning — and last night
coming into full being as a crone, one thing i have learned — and practice — is to not suppress my emotions or thoughts
whether in private, shared, or public space
but to feel or express them right then (with very rare exceptions) —
and to NOT control “my smiles and cries”
i spend a significant amount of time solo —largely, by choice,
so, when I feel immense grief or joy, or experience beauty or pain, humor or outrage,
i let my tears
or my teeth
or my uvula
or my tongue
or
my voice
be in the moment,
and this often manifests even if i am in a public space
i have become as uninhibited and honest — as a young child,
or — as someone on their death bed.
Continue reading ““smiles and cries””
“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
Regular firearm, deer hunting season began yesterday in Michigan, United States of America, and the crack of rifles and the blast of shotguns destroy both peace and life.
There is some version of a legalized, defined kill list or belated, legalized “protection list” for nearly every non-human animal being population on Earth. And, for human animal being populations on Earth too.
What defines murder for human beings, of the human animal body?
INTENT.
All Hunting is INTENT – intent to kill.
All animal “livestock” agriculture is INTENT — intent to kill for profit.
Genocide is INTENT.
Continue reading “contemplating intent, consent, kill lists and ceasefire: deer hunting season, regular firearm, November 15 – 30, 2024 Michigan, U.S.”imagining cocoons of
luna moths
in every furled and fallen
leaf
i use all my breaths
to counter the Wind
who wants to roar them, all,
away
Dear Americans:
When you finally realize that the solution to the economy — rent and groceries (not the stock market, not your investment portfolio), to health and healthcare, bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, the climate crisis, to environmental destruction — of land, air, and water and biodiversity, to wealth inequality, to systemic racism/white supremacy, to colossal, empire-sized military and police budgets — and endless overt and proxy wars and ongoing GENOCIDE — CAN NOT and WILL NOT be found in the BALLOT BOX — blue or red,
— then what?
then, what will you do? will you hope to ride it out quietly with whatever measure of privilege you possess (white male, white adult, middle-classed, usefully employed in the systems of government or institutions of political or corporate power)?
Will you finally rise up and do the necessary-yet-awful, brave, brutal and hard work to resist and fight — like every dignified human collective across history and even today — like the Palestinians? Like the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho? Like the Maroons of Haiti — or will you be like the Germans — roll over, fall in line, bide your time — hope they come for your neighbor or coworker instead; maybe even turn them in?
This “nation is a massacre”, it always has been
for tens of millions of people right here of and on this land — and for hundreds of millions globally — even if that excludes you and yours (for now).
Enough of this profane American existence.
Enough already.
Continue reading “Open Letter to Americans”
and this Autumn, and last, and every season in between have required so much Auden
lilacs re-leaf, re-bloom
in October
hummingbird moths feed,
and simultaneously,
She’s un-be-coming a human be-ing
She’s destined to,
we’re destined to, too
no
need to
tell me, explain
what’s happening
as constant witness,
as constant, remote witness to slaughter,
as constant gardener,
as constant tender,
as constant daughter,
i see.
i recognize.
i know,
Continue reading “phenology II”as i sit here on my deck on a beautiful, late August, Sunday morning in rural southwest Michigan reading an article about surviving a bear attack at Signal Mountain in Yellowstone in May 2024,
i am reminded that
one of my very favorite things as a kid was to visit my great grandmother and to sit in her rocking and folding lawn chair, all by myself on the tiny porch — of her modest, peach-colored stucco bungalow at 2229 West Oakdale Avenue in Chicago — because we didn’t have a porch, only a stoop at CHA’s Julia C. Lathrop Homes where i lived as a child (privacy, peace and quiet were rare there) and comb through her Reader’s Digest magazine collection for stories of wilderness experiences and encounters with wildlife — especially the ones with predators: sometimes, not everyone survived in those excerpted stories /
but the intense desire to experience the outdoors that those stories inspired in me was almost entirely extinguished when i went, *with zero experience* on a three day/two night camping-canoe trip along the Fox River for our 8th grade class graduation trip; me and another 13 year-old female classmate were paired together in a canoe in a group of 5-6 canoes / i went [un]prepared with a borrowed, indoor Barbie slumber party sleeping bag from one friend and my best friend Jill’s dad’s old army reservist mess kit — everything stuffed into a single, tripled black garbage bag to keep my “gear” dry in case we tipped and went into the water/ Jill couldn’t go herself because that winter she was suddenly stricken with Raynaud’s Syndrome and was quite sick from another, yet-undiagnosed autoimmune disease /
my classmates and i slept outside on the ground without a tent and woke covered dew and very cold both mornings (while the adults occupied two very dry and warm pup tents) // we peed (and presumably, some of us also pooped) into holes dug in the ground within earshot of our 13 & 14 year old [boy] classmates and male teachers // the only other girl on the trip got her period the first night and had to use a sock as a menstrual pad because none of the male teachers thought to come prepared in event for that routine bodily function — and apparently, none of our mothers suggested this to us or to them — or planned for it either //
around the campfire the first night, which was a Friday, our teachers told us in a very serious manner that the camp in the film Friday the 13th — “Camp Crystal Lake” — was actually based on a true story at nearby youth camp— we had, in fact, passed a road sign for “Crystal Lake” en route; while, i had not yet seen the film — but the others filled me in in great detail — and it no longer felt good or safe to be on the trip with them — even after the teachers’ retractions and promises that they were “just joking”.
Continue reading “a reader’s digest *almost-worthy* story”it may feel
tenuous
so much of this seems predicated on phantom 1s, zeroes, grids & presidents
remember what is true, what is real
a deer ambling into the bramble of an overgrown blueberry patch
at last light
a trail of fireflies sparkling behind her like a golden bridal veil
there are deer, there are fireflies, there are blueberries, still
children around your table, grandchildren or a dog underfoot
cotton and wool
flint, boots,
a cache of seeds, oils, a pantry full of grains and beans, bundles of dried herbs, a cellar of roots
a deep well, a spring, or a stream and some vessels
steel, wood, stone, charcoal
pictographs, petroglyphs
cell-deep stories
strings, drums, flutes
a few poems — memorized, recited, improvised
hands near your own as you
birthe, work, live, fight, grieve, survive — and then die
and right now, in this exact moment
Continue reading “tenuous”recipe and method for feeding a baby starling
recipe:
one-half of a medium-boiled large egg, super finely diced
3-4 sardines canned in water, with all the bones and skin, gingerly rinsed under a thin stream of tap water, to remove excess salt, laid atop a paper towel
to passively drain the water,
then, finely chopped
mash sardines and egg together,
then slowly add up to 1 teaspoon of unsweetened organic apple sauce,
the mash should be integrated and mostly smooth
but not too wet or runny
store in sealed glass container refrigerated for no more than 2.5 days
(increase to whole boiled egg and full can of sardines and extra applesauce — and increase mash chunkiness as bird grows)
to feed:
fill a plastic drinking straw with the food,
by pumping the straw up and down into the mash with suction
warm the filled straw in hand while wearing a disposable glove to bring the mash close to room temperature
gently but quickly eject tubes/ribbons of mash into baby bird’s mouth as she gapes for food - like toothpaste on toothbrush almost; it’s daunting at first; she is so demanding! so loud! so urgent!
so hungry!
she will stop gaping when full
wash straw and reuse
(DQ & Five Guys straws are wide, flexible and work best)
repeat feeding every half hour, then eventually every hour or so, about 300 times over the course of next three weeks
to thrive:
during that time create and whistle to her a short, 3-4 note, unique song to recognize your voice
love her, talk to her,
encourage her, comfort her,
and hold her, carry her outside to see the world she will soon enter
also during that time: bring her small worms, slugs and insects to taste and/or eat / you will need to manually reduce them to be digestible for her, at first
then teach her to forage and hunt for them herself; she will use her beak as a shovel to unearth them and poke at and sever them with her beak;
watch her back while she’s busy doing this - be her wingman!
she will teach herself to bathe and sun, fluff, dry and preen
one day she will hop, sputter-fly into the grass, into the garden; into the bramble or tall grasses
then, she will fly and soar - high into the trees, beyond your reach, sight or protection
you will worry about predators and bird bullies, weather, machines, injury and hunger
you will listen for her voice
and whistle and call for her
sometimes you will hear her;
but she will always hear you; she knows your face, form, voice and song
she will still come home for supplemental feeding
she will still come home to sleep in her nest box inside the barn overnight because being a baby bird alone in the world - is exhausting
being a mother bird, even moreso
she will come back, again and again.
she is just pure joy.
she is pure trust.
you are so lucky to have experienced her first weeks of life
you rescued her; but she has restored you, in fact.
please know,
always remember, and never forget:
every bird you see, every wild mammal you see, they all initially survived because of a very devoted mother
i recently binged the biography:
“The Occult Sylvia Plath: The Hidden Spiritual Life of the Visionary Poet” by life-long Plath scholar Julia Gordon-Bramer
i feel fortunate this book was my introduction to Plath and her poet husband, Ted Hughes— and other significant influences in her life and poetry /
hat tip to my long-time favorite podcast: Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio — created and hosted by Miguel Conner at The Virtual Alexandria for interviewing Gordon-Bramer, because, for the first time ever, i was actually interested in Plath — and furthermore, i unexpectedly experienced a psychic “something” with Plath while listening to the audiobook; this “something” — i want to digest, explore – and possibly explain, in detail, in a future essay //
while i imbibed this book, i was simultaneously raising an injured and orphaned starling nestling — on an intensive feeding schedule — and during this time, i learned from the book, that Sylvia and Ted also attempted to rescue an injured and sick baby bird — but after a week, and upon determining rehabilitation was futile, they jointly and sadly euthanized the bird in their gas oven (i know. wow.) ///
Continue reading “Sylvia Dickinson Edgar Anne Hughes”an ascetic’s petitionary prayer, answered
for six consecutive summers, i’ve observed barn swallows enter and inspect the barn — diving and swooping in and out, perching and chattering wholly unbothered by my presence — but not until this, my sixth summer, did they finally deem worthy and decide to make their nest on a joist in this old, ramshackle barn
to experience their nesting is such a tender mercy in the time of remote, yet constant virtual witness and heartrage of genocide, of global horrors and famine — and of the daily unnatural disasters and unrelenting evidence of abrupt, irreversible climate breakdown and biodiversity/ecosystems collapse.
O swallows, swallows, poems are not The point. Finding again the world, That is the point, where loveliness Adorns intelligible things
Because the mind’s eye lit the sun.
Howard Nemerov
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 