Category: dirt road chronicles

oh august,

On By ©️K.T. 2026In agraria, August, bucolia, climate, Climate Acceptance, Climate Chaos, crone chronicles, dirt road chronicles, Earth hospice, from the inner city to outer rural, mortality, night, nightfall, Poem, poetry, Proof of Life, ruralia, summerLeave a comment

humidity hovers around 90 percent even after dark, what i imagine night in a bayou is, even though i’ve never been

still,
i’ll take this corn sweat
over
the asphalt,
the people,
the noise,
the garbage,
the grimied towers, canyons and rivers of cement

and this unrelenting red dirt road dust and sandy soil
instead of
hyperscale “centers of data”

and this light that only
glows quiet
and doesn’t rudely intrude and idle all night //

much of my skin is sun-spotted in shades of brown; the backs of my hand are worn and washed shiny;
my bare feet, beyond dirty;
my soles and palms roughened,
well before your five o’clock
shadow

but
my hands,
my footprint,
my money

they’re cleaner, i think;

not laundered, but with an intentional, continuous cleansing — a secular daily ghusl //

at dusk,

i fill a basin with scented salts
and wear away at another
bar of Lava soap
while rationing my remaining bars of West Bank, olive soap — packaged and delivered in a box with xeroxed pages of poems by Palestinian poets well before 2023 //

Continue reading “oh august,” →

fawn

On 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

both portraits & candids,

& taught me to hate them too/

and today,

on “World Migratory Bird Day”

the May Plow arrived even as every one is

gestating,
laboring,
birthing,
nesting,
laying,

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

the timing of these men with their machines is so detached

from the cycle of Earthling 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 ////

Continue reading “fawn” →

have mercy.

On By ©️K.T. 2026In agraria, barn swallows, birds, Death, dirt road chronicles, dying, Earthling, fauna, Free Palestine, Funerary, funerary portraiture, Gaza, Genocide, holocaust, july, kill lists, kin, Life and Death, maternity, mortality, Mother, Mother God, Motherhood, ornithology, outer rural, Palestine, ruralia, threshold, wildlife, ZionismLeave a comment

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.” →

the obliquity of the ecliptic

On By ©️K.T. 2026In dirt road chronicles, Earth, from the inner city to outer rural, Grand Teton, Sol, Solstice, summer, Sun, timeLeave a comment
Summer Solstice

One experience of living rurally — without any obstructions of buildings or infrastructure — and with a full southern exposure out my front door, generous windows and an unencumbered view of all four cardinal directions — it’s like i am in the center of a beautiful compass at all times — is, that i have been able to observe and better understand the obliquity of the ecliptic:

marking the farthest northeastern point of the Sun’s eager rise and the farthest northwestern point of the Sun’s leisurely set at the Summer solstice with my own eyes — the Sun making a deep, high horseshoe arc on those long Summer days,

and to watch the Sun’s progression/regression daily,

and, to witness how at the Winter solstice, the Sun just sleeps in, lazily rising in southeastern Sky, just barely making an appearance for us in the northern latitudes — offering us the shallowest, little arc of light before quickly bedding down again in the southwestern Sky;

Darkness is so precious in the Summer and the light is so precious in the Winter. The darkness is so gloriously abundant in the Winter and the light is so gloriously a abundant in Summer;

i am so grateful and privileged to have experienced this solar panorama and time lapse in real life for eight years now, after living many decades in a major North American city — Chicago, without it;

and,

below is my favorite ever foto to share on the Solstice: Attila Kálmán faithfully and wondrously captured the obliquity of the ecliptic — his camera tracking the Sun’s path from a point on the Northern Hemisphere of Earth from Summer to Winter Solstice in 2012.

photo by: Attila Kálmán, h/t to Earthsky, 2012.
Perfect for explaining our Sun, axial tilt and seasons to a child
(or to a white American adult).

and a few of my own favorite Summer Solstice experiences:

2020 | Solstice Hike & The Grand,
Schwabacher Landing,
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, U.S.
Continue reading “the obliquity of the ecliptic” →

unalike

On By ©️K.T. 2026In death and other endings, dirt road chronicles, Epigenetic, Mother, Poem, poetry, relationships, womb, women1 Comment

the golden salmon sky beckons
before the orange orb emerges and the blue arrives
i call you to the glass doors for the eastern view
but you move with an intentional, sabotaging slowness,
without the respect, the urgency
that ephemeral light and beauty require of us

that’s just one difference between me and you,
i am keeping watch, i stay ready for some thing holy,

and you, you clock-watch for the mundane:
for the mail, for dr. phil

rushing only to ever get “it” all over with — the chore, the trip, the holiday, the ceremony, the meal, the dishes, even the damn dessert and bedtime prayer /

nothing ever truly experienced — or savored by you

save for your anger, your resentment,
and that ever-lasting gobstopper of hate, that you nurse in your cheek, its bitterness, sourness, leaching down into,

embalming, your still-living heart

how did i be-come me with you as a mother?

Continue reading “unalike” →

january 10 2025

On By ©️K.T. 2026In america, anthropocene, bucolia, Capitalism, Climate Chaos, Climate Collapse, Colonization, Crone, crone chronicles, Crone Consciousness, dirt road chronicles, Earth, Earth hospice, Earthling, Fascism, from the inner city to outer rural, Genocide, goodbye city life, heartbreak, january, kinship, Lamentations, outer rural, planetary hospice, PoemLeave a comment

a sweet spot, a warm, quiet evening,

of a too-soft winter here,

on & of the good Earth,

that tempts the comfortable one

to flirt with forgetting

the hard totality

of this hot and cold, man-made,

loud and brutal World.

waiting for the bough to break

On 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.

Continue reading “waiting for the bough to break” →