Three Poems

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.