Category: ruralia

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.” →

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

On By ©️K.T.2026In agraria, america, Animals, anthropocene, autumn, Ceasefire, Crone, crone chronicles, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, Death, deer, deer hunting, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, Essay, fauna, Gaza, Genocide, holocaust, hunters, hunting, hunting season, Hylic, kin, kinship, Life and Death, liminality, limineen, Manifest Destiny, November, outer rural, Palestine, Philosophy, planetary hospice, Politics, Psychic, ruralia, the accidental seeker & intentional opiner, the old gods, Tradition As Violence, Tradition Is Violence, ZionismLeave a comment

“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.” →

Neith

On By ©️K.T.2026In Alchemy, Arachne, autumn, crone chronicles, dirt road chronicles, earthlings, Mother, Mother God, Neith, ruralia, September, spider, the old gods, weaver, web of lifeLeave a comment

after weeks of near-drought, there came a life-bringing rainstorm,

and so Neith from her realms, overnight, joined in world-building, world-weaving with her Earthly kin

laying gossamer highway across the tree canopy, the meadow and the garden — an autumnal garland, glistening in the september morning light, heralding equinox

Continue reading “Neith” →

the apple pickers

On By ©️K.T.2026In Animals, August, autumn, bucolia, dirt road chronicles, Earthling, earthlings, fauna, Gold, kin, outer rural, Poem, poetry, ruralia, summer, SunriseLeave a comment

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 ///

apple-picker in the morning
on the eve of
August’s ides
2024