Tag Archives: wildlife
When you can
If you could, you would feed the birds of Kyiv, of Mariupol, the pipits and larks, the warblers and wagtails lost in the suffocating skies over scorched trees in which they once slept and nested. If you could, you would shelter the martens and voles, the hares and dormice who fled cratered homes, the incendiary […]
Just enough
This trace of snow is not enough, not enough to ease the long drought, quench the earth, quash the coming fires. Too little, too late in the age of our realized ruin, yet enough, just enough to record in bas-relief the perishing evidence of remaining wonders: the fragile tines of an early junco’s foot, the […]
My life as an animal
I fell from the life of everything through warm, wet darkness, iron in my innocent mouth. I was born. Stood on spindly legs, nursed from the life of the world my first milk, its many protections. I was hers for awhile. Then my body changed, became larger. I moved on. Hungry, I ate. Thirsty, I […]
Fraternity now and football
At the end of the rut the bucks grow weary great heads bowed beneath battle-worn racks here and there a desultory joust a soft grunt cast in diminishing wind toward indifferent does. What was it all about? Majesty tattered, they plod and limp half-dazed as if emerging from a potent spell, speak to former rivals […]
A lineage of place
To Mark and Oliver, who moved, and to Molly, who died. To the young woman who traded her name for a husband, and honeymooned here. To Ruth, who brought her losses, and let them float away in warm and gentle water: May you be well. Each had written in the worn journal left on […]
Sound and fury
The Fourth of July is a quintessentially American holiday, composed of over-the-top visuals, deafening noise, national self-aggrandizement and victimization of vulnerables, especially dogs, thousands of which will run away, cower in terror, or simply wet themselves. I may well do the same, as each year, I find myself more averse to these cacophonous, polluting celebrations […]
Meditatio Ephemera 