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Mountain, raptor conservation organization

      At breakfast, a stentorian crack

      against the picture window

      and the kids and I are up:

      jam-faced, suddenly caffeinated.

      A Cooper’s hawk hunches over its prey—

      probable relative of the starlings

      we shared a house with last fall.

      The small bird hangs limp as Jesus

      in the accipiter’s mouth

      as its breath is squeezed out

      a few feet from my bell feeder.

      This happened before.

      When we first moved, at Payne’s,

      British bistro in Gas City, Indiana:

      Hawk drives small bird into French doors

      as I savor grilled brie with bacon

      try to forget, for a moment,

      my life in Middle America.

      Not that it’s so bad—

      this life with starlings.

      They find their way in

      through four layers of roof,

      foramen where filigree pulls away

      from dormer, into the attic and down

      through century-old pocket doors.

      Despite my husband’s best efforts

      with foam spray, we can’t seem to

      keep nature from waking us up here,

      getting into our personal space, dreams.

      It stuns us, drives us into the looking glass.

      Only then does it mount on wings,

      like a flying cross, glide us to heavenly places.

      Cardinal Moon

      Why a blood moon? Our five-year-old son

      as we unroll sleeping bags onto wet grass.

      Is it time to talk about the book of Joel—

      portents, prophesies, the book of Revelation?

      What’s a tetrad? Our ten-year-old daughter

      as I explain how Cassiopeia resembles a tornado,

      what frightens us most in this Midwestern town.

      Is it time to discuss numbers—consecutive

      lunar eclipses, sixth seals and surreal dreams?

      Why not a cardinal moon? A crabapple moon?

      Firebush moon, ladybug moon, red wagon moon?

      I relate the Rayleigh scattering of sunlight

      through the atmosphere, how the moon

      only appears to be red as Taylor Swift’s

      “Blank Space” blares from the garage radio.

      Where does God live if the cosmos goes on forever?

      If the Great Bear is a dipper, Southern Cross an umbrella,

      I will lift mine eyes. Chew the moon slowly.

      Hear every crunch as I scatter it in fall,

      that perfect pomme, as wind dissipates dew

      like a doe and her fawns spreading star-like carpels

      and seeds or a red-crested bird, flitting monthly

      from crescent to beautiful predictable feminine full moon.

      Chickens

      For Jack and Amy

      My friend’s husband is gentle.

      He takes sugar ants outdoors in spring,

      spends spare time learning chords

      to pop songs big the year he was born.

      But last summer when their pullets began

      to disappear, his anger became fuel

      for something else—a source: like uranium

      for sun power or fission for energy.

      He drowned the possum denning

      under their porch; chucked its

      bloated body in the back field

      where they’d once tried to keep bees.

      A few days later, the carcass was covered

      in vultures. My friend hoped they’d pick it

      to bones, didn’t want her kids to know

      that like Cain, they’d taken an innocent life.

      (The brood was gone without blood

      or feathers. Only a hawk could have

      accomplished such a thing.)

      But the vultures left the dead alone;

      apparently hog cholera’s easier to digest

      than swollen possum. Husband away at school,

      my friend mowed circles around it for weeks.

      Maybe next year they’ll try an orchard, a garden.

      Their apples won’t be scabby, get crown gall

      or fire blight, and the cherry tomatoes—

      God they’ll be small and red

      and we’ll pop them into our mouths

      like atomic fire balls, seeds and juice

      exploding, mushroom clouds rising

      as we watch the sun go down in the country.

      Early Summer Prayer

      The gray bobbed woman

      calls common loons

      with her hands at the bonfire,

      lips pressed to thumbs.

      Fingers open, close,

      up and down like a kestrel’s tail

      or blue fan in the relief

      at the lower northern portico

      of Hatshepsut’s temple.

      In a boat the queen fishes,

      fowls in kilt and crown

      for as long as the colors

      hold true or until the usurper

      erases her inscriptions.

      Like the first female pharaoh,

      the gray woman would like

      to remove the feminine “t”

      from the end of her name

      or float into some tundra pond,

      evicting territorial owners.

      Instead she’ll moan

      as smoke and early summer

      ascend like red granite obelisks,

      each rich yodel a prayer

      the pair will mate for life.

      Lock

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