Category: maternity

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 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

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.” →

proof of life | awkward family fotos

On By ©️K.T. 2026In baby bird food recipe, birds, childhood, Crone, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, Earthling, earthlings, grandmother, july, june, ki, kin, maternity, Mother, Motherhood, Poem, poet, poetry, postpartum, son, starling, summer, women, WomenfolkLeave a comment

a suspension

of borrowed time & life

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
Continue reading “proof of life | awkward family fotos” →

postpartum

On By ©️K.T. 2026In Alchemy, Aurum, Birth, Crone, Cronehood, Feminine, grandmother, kin, maiden, maternity, Mother, Poem, poetry, Sacred Feminine, symbiosity, womb, women, WomenfolkLeave a comment

fetal cells
remain in a mother’s body for decades
they know this
particularly
because of mothers of sons

son cells discovered
co-mingling in their mother’s
blood
and marrow
long after their first breaths of atmosphere
and for far too many mothers,
long after their child’s last

we mothers, in-secret chimeras
29, 50,
years after birthing /

no wonder

he breathes
1,191.582 miles away from me

as the crow flies,
as the monarch flies
as the hummingbird flies

and still, i feel the cells of gold i alchemized

for 42 strange, wondrous weeks

in my crone bones

postpartum is forever

Continue reading “postpartum” →