Groundhog Day Blizzard
Maple bare, feeder
Quarrelsome with sparrows
Squirrel devouring the suet-cake.
Goldfinches spaced along
A thistle tube, decorous
In military drab.
Deck-rail and garage roof pillowed
Picnic table a snow-hexagon
Birdbath a meringue.
Maple leaves mounded on garden plot
Cook to compost under snow
Slowly, slowly.
Oranges on the counter
Bagged in red net prove
it’s sunny somewhere.
Cottage Country, Michigan
.
It hasn’t rained in weeks.
The farmhouse lawns are crisp,
ground-cover wilted, roadside grasses khaki.
The trees are second growth. Newaygo’s forest
rebuilt Chicago after that incident
with Mrs. O’Leary’s milk cow.
Since then, it’s burned, been hunted hard,
prospered briefly, aged badly.
Nicest building in White Cloud? The welfare office.
North of town, M-37’s lined
With rusted trailers where someone
Tries to make a life,
sharpen chain saws, style hair
take care of kids, sell bait.
Everything’s for sale. Houses, boats,
jet skis, snowmobiles. The kids
go off to college or the Navy.
They don’t come back.
On Birch Grove trail, the red pines sway,
scent the light breeze
While oak leaves tremble slightly.
I walk the swamp path, my progress announced
by frogsplash, sudden rustle as
a whitetail’s rump flashes across the ferns.
The bears are coming back.
We hear coyotes howl at night.
There are rumors of cougars.
The Crows
The crows have disappeared. A few years back,
They flocked across the street
ready to swoop onto road-killed squirrels
Jab their black chisel-beaks into my garbage bags
At the precise spot where the t-bone lies.
They were never road kill themselves.
Too smart for that, they’d flap away
as a car approached. No hurry.
They weren’t nervous, as the finches are,
or sparrows on the feeder, scattering at shadows.
So where are they? The DNR suspects West Nile disease
mails dead ones off to Lansing.
My neighbor thinks they’re flocking
somewhere else. He’s seen them east of here
cawing from oak tops their triumph over cats.
I miss them, their hooting caws, black
Shining feathers, eyes that know
Everybody dies.
Their eyes do know everybody dies….