Some of these hummingbirds don’t play fair. Fair warning.

Earth and Green

and all the smells

that most folk think

should be shriven from our noses.

There is always dirt and scroffle from the fields

and the garden.

Get the fuck over it.

Learn to love the wild tang of life.

How Bad

“How bad is it where you live,” he asks.
“Difficult,” I say.
What I would rather say is, “You think you have problems…”
But I know we all got problems.
These are our problems, not yours.
Rural.
Flyover.
Crumbling social and physical infrastructure.
Bad net access.
Opioids spread
on top of a karst of misery and poverty
and dead agri-culture.
Our kids leaving us behind with wet eyes reflecting back in the mirrors
that let them know that the family they see in the mirror are closer than they appear.
And they yell as they peel out in a cloud of gravel lime dust,
“Get off the farm. See the real world before it is too late.”
And these last words are layered on all the extinctions and all the signs of catastrophe:
bats gone
pollinators gone
planting zones changing
ash trees and red oak passing away like so many chestnuts
and so much die off that we never…even…. see
and will never…ever… know.
And why won’t we ever…even…see?
Because
as a race
we are more ignorant than a box of pundits
making the rounds.
How bad is that?

Sounds You Might Hear at 10pm on Saturday Night from My Front Porch

Sounds You Might Hear at 10pm on Saturday Night from My Front Porch

The diesel electric trains 
that no longer carry people 
unless you consider corporations as people. 
Seasonal sounds: 
    Cicadas, 
    the silent blink of fireflies, 
    the dusty whirr of a hummingbird moth, 
    automatic rifle fire from our neighbors a mile away because it’s open season on the moon, 
    the creak of ice cracking open another red oak weakened by ants and climate change, 
    the silence of our nearest neighbor’s home, abandoned by family, mind gone and done been sent to a another ‘home’ that no one in their right mind would rightly call home. A windchime set off by the resonance of a porch swing with me in it,
the ticking of an abscission layer on a leaf as it releases its green self, free to decay.
the endless whirring clock of the Milky Way spinning ever on and on 
the condense and release of dew from a metal roof rolling down until it finds the verge…and then drips
into a rain barrel.
Or maybe none of this, just other, less civil fearful heartbeats, and squeaks and screams
of predator and prey .

Worksheet

OK,

I will worksheet my understanding

into a series of corrales called text boxes,

just so many sheepish thoughts milling about,

Flocked and bleating,

calling out to other thoughts in other boxes

waiting to be sorted

waiting to be bought

by some slaughter house

for consumption,

frightened by strange smells

and even stranger others’ thoughts

in the worksheet.

Abandon ye…

If you have read this far,

and you still have hopes

and you are at Dante’s verge midway or farther

upon the journey of your life

and finding yourself

within a forest dark

and from the straightforward pathway been lost

and seeing this above the lintel of doorway to somewhere:

“Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate”

then be disabused.

I am empty of expectation.

I don’t even use the word hope.

If you do use that word,

you’d best be ready to die to back it up

and go all the way through every bolgia of hell

shouting hope at every denizen

just like Dante and Virgil.