that’s all i know



a companion truths poem to, and
influenced in part by, this most beautiful
dreamt song and these sweetly sung truths,
by Rodney Crowell.


my mother turned 75 years-old yesterday
and that’s all i know,
about her
anymore

Continue reading “that’s all i know”

have mercy.

in mid-July, the summer-resident barn swallows who had successfully raised and launched four fledglings by June 23rd, 2025, attempted to raise a second brood;

while i am not absolutely sure if it was the same set of parents or another in the barn swallow community that utilized the nest — as there is a collective of more than a dozen swallows that visits and assists in feeding sometimes too — it is most likely they are the same parent pair;

this is the second summer the barn swallows have nested here in my barn — using last year’s well-constructed nest which they attached to one of the joists like a balcony cantilevered on a Chicago highrise;

i began leaving the overhead barn door open when i first noticed them circling and investigating the barn a few years back; and i was thrilled last year when they began construction of their nest — they were so very welcomed and wanted here — i now know to leave the barn door raised from mid May through July to give them access.



the first brood of four swallows,
not quite fledged, but stretching their wings in the safety of the barn, June 2025

Continue reading “have mercy.”

absurdity fathomed, sunday morning



the absurdity of the beauty of this dawn moment,

the absurdity

of the normalization of any moment or day, in life,

of the uninhibited and unselfconscious public documentation of both the ordinary and the excesses of life

simultaneous to

the People of Gaza documenting

Israeli Zionists

confining, starving, shooting, bombing, maiming, killing

and

incinerating
children,


in Palestine.


Continue reading “absurdity fathomed, sunday morning”

the Anti-Übermensch

if there was a Mother God,

if God was a Mother,

not “were”

this wouldn’t be
our reality

a dying planet
a deadened polity

mass extinction by chainsaw, net,
bolt-gun or bomb
they said, “96% of children in Gaza feel that death is imminent”
in Sudan, the famine is massive,
oh, this reaper, he is very discriminate
in Congo, there’s mass enslavement for minerals,
see the phone in her hand?! her hypocrisy?! she can’t claim to be innocent!
the Pacific’s so hot,
that it’s killed 4 million murres
while the Indigenous still invoke
cultural rights” to baby seal furs

therefore,

God is either male — or, truer,
the God who created everything,
was the very first one extincted,
as Nietzsche,
and the german thinkers before him,
all, belatedly said,

Continue reading “the Anti-Übermensch”

contemplating intent, consent, kill lists and ceasefire: deer hunting season, regular firearm, November 15 – 30, 2024 Michigan, U.S.


“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.”

Arthur Schopenhauer.


a white-tailed deer drinks from a bird bath,
which was presumed to be of exclusive use of songbirds — especially, eastern bluebirds,
on the land the author occupies
Halloween 2024
“all treatery, no trickery”

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.”

399

The Queen, Mother and Grandmother Grizzly Bear,

the iconic Matriarch of Grand Teton National Park & the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem


Monday morning, June 22, 2020,
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, US
The iconic and prolific female grizzly bear [399] — a mother and grandmother was in forage with her own eldest adult daughter [610] — also a mother, along with her cubs and grand cubs.

399, pictured here, who should be referred to respectfully as Grand Mother Bear, at the age of 24, in Spring of 2020 birthed four cubs [a rare, large litter no matter the age of the grizzly, but at 24, was truly astounding] was with 610, whom should be called Daughter Bear, who birthed two cubs as well.
All but two of the six cubs were mostly hidden by the deep sagebrush and dense fog.

What wild majesty to behold.
Lodged in my mind’s eye forevermore.

photo by: author

“Grizzly 399” is gone,

and this Autumn, and last, and every season in between have required so much Auden


Continue reading “399”

phenology II

lilacs re-leaf, re-bloom
in October
hummingbird moths feed,


common lilacs [Syringa vulgaris]
— not cultivars —
in unprecedented re-leaf and re-bloom
October 12, 2024


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”

ghosts

if you’re seeing this, you’re alive,

though dying — no matter your age, health, relative safety, relative comfortability —

on this living, though suffering and actively dying, planet

Earthlings and Earth together in a protracted hospice

right now, in these brief years, these grief years,

we are the “ever-living ghosts of what once was”

a “was” that most all of us alive this morning have never known as lived experience — save for the untouched tribes — 10,000 Uncontacted Peoples — 10,000 unsystematized, “uncivilized”

and the Ocean, and the few, still-standing Ancient One Trees; the untouched Desert, and the Mountains — even the youngest of them — The Tetons and The Himalayas, know what it “was” to be alive.

we are mere ghosts, walking dead.


Continue reading “ghosts”

asters, monarchs & crone

i offer purple bouquets

rooted in the ground,
not dying, wasted, in vase or pot

this purple
reflected in your eyes, my eyes

monarchs married in our october gaze

we’re not long for this world, we, monarchs, asters, and crone

still, we feast, without any gluttony, waste or fear

one of us, prepares for honeymoon flight to Mexico

where marigolds and death await

later, birds with bellies filled by aster, will seed a known, unknown future

crone’s eyes full and clear, she sees it all, near and far, past, present, future, winter and spring

she is rooted too, laughing and grieving in the threshold

between death and the future, future and the death

between remnant wild and final ravagement

between time and anti-time

thousands of purple petals cascade from her crown chakra like asters //

Continue reading “asters, monarchs & crone”

institutional knowledge

another part of mourning, an enduring part of mourning:

the loss of the “institutional knowledge” of you that they alone held, documented and archived;

when

a life-long, childhood or early adulthood friend

a beloved mother, or grandmother, or father,

a harmonious sibling, a close cousin

a long-time lover,

a partner in a long marriage, officiated — or not

a child whom you birthed or raised and who may have also birthed or raised you, have mercy.

when, those relationships become one-sided through death — or other endings,

not only are they gone,

Continue reading “institutional knowledge”

Zionism is Nazism | Israel’s Holocaust of Gaza

ISRAEL is perpetrating INDISPUTABLE textbook GENOCIDE in GAZA.

ISRAEL is an uncontrollable, gone-rogue nuclear-state that has not abided any UN resolutions for ceasefire or immediate international humanitarian aid delivery.

ISRAEL has either intentionally targeted or effectively admitted that it cannot control its own military troops after the targeted triple strikes on marked/identifiable and IDF pre-approved World Central Kitchen vehicles — killing 7 multi-national humanitarian aid volunteers. Hence, World Central Kitchen is suspending operations in Gaza, and its ships with 240 tons of remaining food on board for Gaza have departed back to Cyprus.

THE UN must deploy peacekeeping forces.

U.S.-controlled NATO sits on its hands while the atrocities in GAZA are in plain sight for everyone with a screen. The whole World is watching an acute HOLOCAUST of PALESTINIAN PEOPLE.

U.S. President Joe BIDEN & U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken unconscionably deny that ISRAEL has committed any WAR CRIMES or CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY — though:

ISRAEL has murdered at least 10,000 PALESTINIAN children in six months’ time.

ISRAEL has murdered at least 9,000 PALESTINIAN women in six months’ time.

ISRAEL has has murdered doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarian aid workers.

ISRAEL has targeted and destroyed hospitals schools and housing.

ISRAEL has completely destroyed 90% of the hospitals in Gaza.

ISRAEL has committed human horrors — rivaling those of the Nazi SS — at the Al-Shifa Hospital Medical Complex.

ISRAEL is actively and intentionally denying or destroying food aid and destroying fresh water sources and infrastructure. ISRAEL intends to GENOCIDE ONE MILLION PALESTINIAN PEOPLE in GAZA by famine and thirst and denial of medicine and medical and surgical treatment.

ISRAEL has destroyed more than half — possibly up to 80% of structures, infrastructure and land in Gaza. This is a U.S. “Manifest Destiny” playbook dispossession and removal via destruction and genocide. //

U.S. President Joe BIDEN and his administration have forced AMERICANS to directly underwrite this GENOCIDE by using AMERICAN taxpayer dollars to fund ISRAEL’s HOLOCAUST of GAZA with cash and weapons.

Continue reading “Zionism is Nazism | Israel’s Holocaust of Gaza”

crow-hearted

i have a heart for crows.


a Crow died and also lived here

likely dying during or before the brief, but deep snowdrifts of january 2024

and definitely not by predation; Crows are simply too smart for the local feral cat bird-killers (the only worthwhile information that author Jonathan Franzen ever imparted to me) — and work in groups to warn and defend against hawks and owls;

Continue reading “crow-hearted”