Feeble and sickly
late November sun glazes
Midwestern bone bareness
severe skeletons of oak
the world cracked shut
opaque skies, broken eggshells
frail light absorbed by black-tarred asphalt
I tread along, swishing snow pants
in my oversized puffy coat
aunt-knitted purple mittens
static hair, matted at the neckline
sexless and middle aged
crowned by a neon orange beanie
peaking like a condom
like a rooster’s wattle, vain and flapping
but necessary
given the scattered pops of gunshots
along the colorless treeline
like fresh wood thrown in a fireplace
passing a sallow field
punctured by the bounding buck
startled frantic and thick-thighed
I count the plastic bags
garbage scattering the roadside
miniature hard liquor bottles and shredded soda cans
caught in wire fence lines, sagging and rusted
pavement smeared with roadkill:
pieces of a neighbor’s cat, fluff and dried chunks of blood
the gaping scream of a decapitated opossum
a half-devoured mouse
swirls of summer snakes pummeled flat
as belligerent pickup trucks whiz past
feeling like the landscape – grey and ruthless
despairing
sharp-breathed, cracked
forsaken, sucked dry
before the soft surrender of snow fall
like the land, I am -- a corpse drained of spirit
When I crest a hill,
and the sky opens abruptly:
a raw flush of them, full-flocked
thousands
shrouding a clump of elms, dense and ripe with blackness
chittering humidly, like stumbling upon a jungle
wheezing, sputtering in garrulous gangs
avian invaders from across the seas
crowds calling to each other, egging themselves on
taking off and landing in swollen bursts, cresting waves
restlessly convening and reconvening on branches
limb to limb, sputtering with a wet terror
like preparing for the flood, ready to embark
each one --- a droplet of the swarm, an atom of God
surging upward into their vortex
they moisten me, unhinging something
flipping me inside out
loosening the soul from its stiff winter jail
tearing open the brittle heart
liberated from a cold wire cage
we are on the verge of something
I don’t know what
wild and dripping
with epiphany
