everyone was exceptionally smiley at me and just sweet and friendly at my local and very crowded grocery store chain today — so much so, that i had to check my sandals — to see if they were matching, and make sure i had put my pants on, and that i had brushed through my dirty-ish, bedhead, dry-shampooed hair before leaving the house, and that my mascara wasn’t bleeding from my lashes and running down my face from this morning’s exceedingly sweaty gardening session (no, that’s not a euphemism), that, maybe their shining eyes and smiles were merely expressions of some sy/e/mpathy for me//
but nope, all good — at quick glance in a full-length mirror of the super store clothing section ///
it seems people were just being universally lovely this sunday, and to me, for no apparent reason, at all,
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
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
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
this was the summer of broken limbs on trees, animals — and men this was the summer of the fuck-it, no-good vegetable garden this was the summer of “not this year”, “but, maybe next,” — again this was the summer of the i-still-can’t-believe-she’s-dead birthday this was the summer of nesting swallows, wicked sparrows, and a fallen starling nestling, whom she fed, and kept in her pocket for future starlight this was the summer of hanging baskets heavy with rainbow gazanias and pots full of midnight black petunias — for balance — incessant dead-heading and concrete stains, a small price this was the summer of the blue serpent; of serpentine bracelets and of the serpent-printed dress — she to be photographed on this land with the flowers, the dog and the bird, like Frida this was the summer of first-realizing she may be the reincarnation of the spirit once-embodied in Sylvia Plath
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.
barn swallow nest under construction, june 9, 2024Audobon’s Birds of America, Popular Edition, 1950, Macmillan,
*from the author’s collection of vintage books of North American birds, wildlife and insects
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.
what radiance i’ve possessed in your eyes has naturally dimmed after these 30years; and so has yours — in mine, these last five, if i am being truthful, which you know me to be, guttingly
once the solar star, now, a mere lighthouse on the other’s shore,
do you still wonder what you are?
you, my sonlight, are still golden, burning hot and bright,
but these blue lenses of ours,
and these blue talks of ours,
reveal we are animal, elemental,
sometimes too human, and fragile.
only, you fail to acknowledge another possibility, another cosmic continuum.
from Chicago, annoyed, yet exhilarated while i was full of held tears, a mother, trying to mother a boy, on his bold edge of two decades of life
2014 was a rough half year to June
we lost our first person to fetanyl but he would not be [y]our last
i witnessed your grandmother’s January bitter coldness for the second time and i still have a lasting bone chill from it
by the time you drive across the Mississippi River, you have forgiven me but i, you — even before you drove out of our alley, we keep forgiving one another, me and you.
a couple of weeks later,
i am with our first, sweet dog in our Sun-filled back yard, as he is given a gentle, good death / we have shared so many firsts, but this,
i/we do without you; 17 years — ours, for sixteen — this loyal and strong dog that you chose on Mother’s Day weekend on LaSalle Street
how can it ever be a home again without you, without him
originally published june 17, 2016, revised june 11, 2023
* please visit the website/app Falling Fruit to add a fruiting tree that is located and accessible in the public way to the foraging database for others.
the author’s mulberry-stained fingers
A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night
Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
the old-timer’s disease
A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life
a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe — no one
A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree
Woody Guthrie, the mulberry forager
A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye now
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called
On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t let him get loose in the dark, don’t let him get skunked in the dark
contorted mulberry tree at night
the same contorted mulberry in Sun’s light: wowowow
Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth
The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and this woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep
Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn
She and that dog,
They were urban foragers and gleaners in June.
All month long, her fingertips, feet and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, it didn’t even once occur to her to check his paws
A clear, recollection of acute melancholy:
this day — that day was also her son’s birthday //
The first birthday he ever spent away from home, away from her — in Nebraska, or was it Alaska?
That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 