Category: outer rural
fast food
there’s a good spot nearby:
garden-to-mouth / raw, whole foods
served forage-buffet style
and trepadeira pepper
Continue reading “fast food”
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.
not quite fledged, but stretching their wings in the safety of the barn, June 2025
Continue reading “have mercy.”
january 10 2025
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.
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.”
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.”
the apple pickers
when the Sun reaches the precise height
above horizon,
then arrive the tawny-bodied apple pickers and gleaners/
stilts for legs,
i count twenty limbs in tree camouflage/
bypassing the bushel and the sack
the bounty of fruit down into their bellies //
ears like SETI,
searching for sounds of hoof-less life — canine or primate in the universe
and also, for movement of my unseen, yet intense presence —my breath and pulse slowed, just above, just beyond them —
but i am not in a tree stand/ i brandish no shotgun, no ray gun ///
how rare, these ones are among us,
— among we Earthlings :
silent, gentle and elegant ///
they linger in the morning gold as it stretches West to the lake and evaporates too quick into its blues/
i linger in the dark cool of the open bedroom window, facing North
my senses also honed — and sated//
on this eve of August’s ides,
autumn has not trespassed on the summer,
but was intentionally summoned ///
on the eve of
August’s ides
2024
July is for remembering Frida Kahlo
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón
born 6th of July 1907
died 13th of July 1954
Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico
Sylvia Dickinson Edgar Anne Hughes
every poet should know the company of a wild bird, at least once
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 //
Julia Gordon-Bramer
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”maybe on the full moon
if you move out of the city
if you move into the country
if you reclaim a meadow
if you plant more than two dozen trees
if you oppose paving the dirt road
if you fill ten bird baths, every single day, until they freeze
if you refuse to mow the clover, plaintain, and dandelion before they set seed
if you sit in silence on the stoop each night, watching
if you turn off every single light before bedtime
if you listen, listen, and listen
if you offer your attention
if you humble your human brain
if you embrace your animal body
if you fall into instinctual kinship
if you are ceaseless in your reverence
if you follow your intuition
maybe the crows will tell their brethren you’re a safe one
maybe the doe will bring her fawns to the salt lick during daylight
maybe the snake will slither under the workbench in the barn while you stand there
maybe the rabbits won’t flee your garden at your footfall
maybe the bats will dance in the twilight sky just above your head
maybe the luna moth will reveal herself to you in that meadow
Continue reading “maybe on the full moon”chosen by swallows, finally
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.
june 9, 2024
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.
Howard Nemerov
Continue reading “chosen by swallows, finally”
she talks to serpents
says they call her out by her name
the author’s window
Continue reading “she talks to serpents”
oh, April
“Why is the World so beautiful?”
Robin Wall Kimmerer
of the evening
of the 29th day of April,
2024 CE
Cenozoic Era
Quarternary Period
Anthropocene Epoch
Michigan, North America
“Why is the World so beautiful?” asks, Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer.
It didn’t have to be — the Earth could’ve been Big-Banged out into a uniform, utilitarian and dull rocky planet — evolving without bluebirds, banana trees and bioluminescent jellyfish — or April’s apple blossoms, golden-pink sky Sunsets, and frog choruses,
but it wasn’t.
have mercy.
Continue reading “oh, April”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 