Brood XIX

By the time we get to Nashville
the party is mostly over,
dead bodies strewn across the sidewalks.

"Two weeks ago,"
Says Dr. F, walking quite fast,
"We wouldn't have been able to hear
each other speak"

Waves to show the little space between us.

",above the noise."

Makes a sweeping gesture to the trees.
"I like it. It reminds me of growing up."

Down by the river,
desparate virgins lurk in the woods
wailing

(easy to take their songs for wails of frustration
these late-comers who might have missed their chance
but, of course
the male cries because that is all he knows how to do)

the path is studded with narrow wells
conduits to the past
and it's not too hard to count by thirteens
1998 - the Lewinsky brood
1985 - the Contra brood
1972 - the Watergate brood

only 14 broods back Old Hickory is in the White House, still grieving,

and wondering about his assets back in Hermitage.

He writes to brother of his just dead wife, son of the Col. founder of Nashborough,

June 7 1829 - To John Donelson
……………..
P.S. Mr. Steel has written me but one letter say to him to write me how much crop he has in, how many coalts, lambs & calves and how my last years coalts are–and of the health of my Negroes–I learn old Ned & Jack are both dead–Jack was a fine boy, but if hew was well attended to, I lament not–he has gone the way of all the earth–
[If the ages in the Hermitage register of 1829 are correct "Old" Ned, might have seen four broods, Jack, dead at 17, just missed seeing two.]

but the past is dead
the travails of man and bug are separate threads
they pull apart cleanly like an insect from its skin

we can search for meaning in the spectacle:
thirteen years of tax on the trees
sapped drop by drop by the waiting grub
then the explosion of screams and sex and death
the hungry mouths of birds
bodies dropping from the trees
a windfall paid back to the forest soil
less the hundred thousand eggs
stealed away in twigs
and some weeks hence
mostly unnoticed
a second rain
grubs fall to the soil
to burrow down,
down
through the husks of their ancestors
to search and find
the root

the promise of return
the fullness of the season and the gathering of things

but I'm afraid I've dug myself too deep
down here at the bottom of the well
staring up at my nearly teenage daughter
one brood hence
regarding me with exasperation.

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Luna

I'm not sure if anyone has ever posted a photo of some sunflowers against the night sky on the

internet. So I thought I would, just in case.

I think that bright thing is the moon, even though it looks more like a streetlight.

Writing Bad Poetry Is Easy and Fun

(for CS)

The vapor clots sit right here

not high or low

a little low, I guess

not fog

the announcer on NPR

shilling for pledges

just said

"get high or go home"

don't think that's what he meant

to say--

a higher register,

Pigeons: spin, strut and puff on lamp posts

Crows: more left to right than vice or verse

have you seen Robert Reich's tumblr?

the guy's so tiny and so smart

but I'm not finished

Gulls: several

Egrets: plenty but I wasn't paying attention

Cormorants: forgot to check the transmission tower but they must be there and I saw one later anyway

Buteo: fine but only saw, up by the clouds because now I'm looking

Turkey Condor: ditto

Pelicans: both flavors brown and white

but look less different in this light

Tern: turns

and dinosaurs across the bay

Smoke Break Ornithological Notes, ca. 2005

Crows are going nuts all over that palm tree, pulling tasty morsels out of the petiole covered trunk. Cockroaches I'll bet.

--

Anna's zips off right at the moment it drops a load into empty space. Looks like a miniature shit-propelled rocket.

 

I live smack dab in the concentrated creamy center of the Pacific flyway. This makes me lucky.

Prognostications

The woodchuck lived in a fairly depopulated corner of Northern Ohio. Then one day, he died. In death, this ex-woodchuck liked to hang out alongside a trail that led into a large, old field. One that had not been mowed or plowed in many, many years. Each morning I would walk past the dead marmot on my way into the field. On business. Each afternoon, I would walk back out and note that the marmot had swoll'd up just a tad bit more in the summer heat. The face was puffy and grimaced. The small limbs out-stretched in rigorous pose. The abdomen continued to bloat ominously.

One morning the groundhog was gone. In his place was a ground-hog sized puddle. A black, greasy, fetid smear. The squirrel had not been smelling very good before. Now he smelled terrible.

This was 2001 and Spanish Joe had predicted an early spring. Dunkirk Dave concurred. Punxsutawney Phil, ever the curmudgeon, called for six more weeks of winter. Anyway, though it was already July.