Writing

Diavomirrhea

I want you to feel safe. I want you to feel loved. I want you to be safe. I want you to be loved.

Good morning, cold air. Good morning, trucks zipping along the highway. Good morning, basalt boulders. Good morning, wildlands.

Winter sky heavy with ravens.

Because the truth is not where we left it.

Because we seek the truth, need the truth, feed the truth.

And truth is water. And we are the drought without truth. No doubt.

Because we lead in truth.

I need a break from being conscious. I can’t wait until I’m under anesthesia tomorrow.

Once you think you’re dying, everything seems like a sign that you’re dying.

Same old story: finding land, encountering people.

One place that is two: (t)here.

I serve poetry. I serve weaving. I serve music. There is no other way, no other choice. I serve Earth. I serve living beings. I serve love. There is no other way, no other choice.

I invented a new word based on my activities last night: diavomirrhea. Since you might need the term someday, you’re welcome.

Don’t quiet quit your life.

When I first learned about filibustering in my civics class, I intuitively understood that I’d be great at it.

I can totally write a single sentence and stop there. But why?

Living in a Dying World

I finally understand how to enter into palliative care for the earth, humans, and all living beings.

I finally comprehend my way of being in this world as this world is being destroyed.

This is the way I’ll live on this land until my body returns to the land. I say this to myself, now, because I’m afraid I’ll wake up in the morning and this feeling, this understanding, will be gone, like a dream.

I say what I say and write what I write to remember what I’ll otherwise lose in a moment, in a flash, when the wrong noise makes my body tighten, when the wrong move makes me brace, when the wrong memory, reawakened, makes me run.

We’re all just walking each other home, as Ram Dass says. “Said,” technically, because the perpetually present-tense world we want to create—especially in poetry—is an illusion.

Past and future exist and matter, even if it’s only because we perceive them and need them in order to make sense of the everything that’s doing and being and moving and thrumming and creating and re-creating everything all the time. Call it God. Call it Gaia. Call it what you will. Call it nothing. It’s still everything.

Past and future inform us in ways we understand and in ways we never will.

Maybe we don’t need perfect understanding.

Maybe love is all that’s perfect and timeless and always available to us, not in a greeting card way but in that way where something is so profound we need the simplest language to discuss, express, share and feel it.

We need a little carving of a heart to hold what can’t be contained, just as we need talismen to keep big, scary things that can’t be named or tamed at bay.

I think it’s Mary Oliver who calls what lies beyond language the ineffable. I can’t find that quote right now, but I did find this passage Oliver wrote that feels perfect for this moment precisely because it situates every moment, every life—everything—within the larger whole of eternity:

Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.

Yes, yes. All the yesses. Oh, Mary. My heart. My heart.

But back to Ram Dass. He’s dead. He died three years ago. He doesn’t say anything now except what he’s left behind with us. Maybe that’s our afterlife, our everlastingness: What we teach each other, what we share with each other, how we love each other, how we fight for each other.

Maybe that’s heaven. Maybe that’s our forever, written not in the clouds but right here where we walk and crawl and kneel and drag ourselves from one day to the next over rough land, over stone, over grasses, over loam.

Regardless, these are things we can do now, while we’re living: teach, share, love, fight.

We can interlace our fingers and move forward, together, until we can no longer move, until we die of natural causes, not from hate or from being cut off from others, from community, from those on whom we all rely for our lives and our well-being.

Every one of us can reach deep into love and, in so doing, become part of a whole that transcends who we are as individuals. No censorship needed. No isolation needed. No shunning. No shaming. No guilt. No fear.

Hold those you love close, and love everyone. I’m begging you.

May you all swim forever in the stream. I’ll try if you will.

—

Sunday, November 20, is Transgender Day of Remembrance. This essay is, in part, a call to end the hate that results in trans people being killed just for being who they are, loving who they love, and being some of the bravest people who walk this earth.

Love can stop these needless deaths. We can stop this. Let’s make it stop.

Sacred and Desecrated

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. 

― Aldo Leopold

I’m staying in a tiny home that overlooks the Virgin River Gorge in La Verkin, Utah. This is my view from the balcony. When I got here, the river was low and relatively unremarkable—a muddy brownish-red my friend in Missouri described as “stark.” Then it rained heavily in Cedar City, a town that should have been called Juniper City because those are the trees that grow there, but I digress. The river swelled and grew noisy, pushing trees and other large pieces of debris aside as it flowed angrily past. This was a new river, a different river, one that felt at once mystical and mythical. But the sky wasn’t about to let water get the upper hand. The sunset last night, shown in my photo, was brief but as powerful as the one James Tate describes in his poem, “Never Again the Same,” which reads, in part:

              The colors were definitely not of this world,
              peaches dripping opium,
              pandemonium of tangerines,
              inferno of irises,
              Plutonian emeralds,
              all swirling and churning, swabbing,
              like it was playing with us,
              like we were nothing,
              as if our whole lives were a preparation for this,
              this for which nothing could have prepared us
              and for which we could not have been less prepared.

Heavy rain and lightning today, along with markedly cooler temperatures, made the creatures who call this wild area home stir. A great blue heron hunted squirming fish from a basalt boulder flanking the river. Squirrels scurried on the balcony then settled in and stared into the middle distance. Broad-tailed hummingbirds fed on native and cultivated shrubs in the seam where what’s wild meets what’s manicured only to the degree that it still looks wild. A red-tailed hawk swooped into the gorge then headed southish following the water.

The collective stench of wildlife urine, pungent and rising from newly moist soil, mingled with the sweet and musty scents given off by the surrounding flora: native plants such as cottonwoods, globemallow, Mormon tea, and sand sage that live alongside introduced species such as cheatgrass, Russian olives, tamarisk trees, and tumbleweeds.

This riparian habitat is unique in Utah. It comprises only one half of one percent of the state’s total land. The highest levels of biodiversity are found in spaces like this. More wildlife species live here. Bird densities are twice as high here. The visitors who flock to this area each year, especially in the warmer months, may look out from their balconies and see something pristine and untouched and remarkable and precious. 

Except for the homes built right up to the gorge’s steep, unstable cliffs. Except for the homes and retaining walls and bird feeders and playground sets the gorge has already swallowed or threatened to swallow. Except for the large banner on the other side of the gorge advertising finished lots for sale—ones that also hug the gorge’s edge. 

Except for the trash dropped over the cliffs’ steep sides and forgotten. Except for the residents who breed their dogs unethically and leave them outside all night long to howl from fear and frustration. Except for what happens behind some of the closed doors here—the kinds of things that could happen anywhere in terms of the broad strokes but whose details follow unique, longstanding patterns specific to this area.

Wendell Barry writes, “There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places.” This is a sacred place, but it is also a desecrated place. Visitors for the most part don’t see beyond the perfect images they capture from their balconies, the ones that literally exclude the houses, trash, and other incursions on the natural land from the frame. They trot out, often barefoot and shirtless, right when the sky erupts with color. They are, as Tate describes, totally unprepared for what they’re seeing, to the point that it makes no impression other than the ones they get on social media for images that have a shelf life shorter than the energy drinks they chug after getting a buzz scaling this or that nameless cliff—not because the cliffs have no names but because those scaling them don’t bother to learn their names before picking up and moving out, on to the next adventure, the next cheap high.

Lexi the Healer

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring—it was peace.

— Milan Kundera

I dreamed about my dog, Lexi, this morning, as she was pressed against my back, sleeping alongside me. In the dream, I was holding her. We were in a park. She saw an older woman in poor health and began wagging her tail. I carried Lexi over to the woman. She angled her head downward and pressed the top of her muzzle against the woman’s cheek.

The woman began to cry. Lexi intrinsically understood what the woman was feeling. She was there for the woman in a way humans hadn’t been. Tears streamed down the woman’s face and landed on Lexi’s wispy facial hairs.

Others from the park gathered around. In silence, they entered the space Lexi was creating for the woman—a space of loving without words, of existing fully and selflessly with someone in need. A kind of joy emerged, not unbridled happiness, but the deeper joy that suffering makes possible.

I heard a “thump, thump, thump,” as rhythmic as a healthy heartbeat. It was Lexi, not in the dream but beside me in bed. Each morning when she wakes up, her tail starts moving before the rest of her body does. The “thump, thump, thump” was her signature wag. Good morning, Lexi, I responded, as I do each day. Those three words invariably set the rest of her body in motion. She wriggles up to my face, plies me with kisses, then curls up in the space between my shoulder and head while I tickle her tummy and tell her how much I love her.

I had other dreams last night—recurring nightmares whose subjects and plots are so similar they’ve worn ruts in my mind. A house with missing walls, no locks on the doors if there are doors at all. Strangers inside with me. Men, mostly. Sometimes complicit women. More of them coming. More and more, so many they resemble debris-filled floodwaters. Me, half-naked, running. A bare mattress in a basement. No way out.

I only remember the nightmares as I sit down to write this. The dream of Lexi is what got me through the night. The reality of Lexi is what gets me through each day. Lexi and her wagging tail. Lexi curled up beside my head, her soft, disheveled fur tickling my face. Lexi and the space she creates for deep joy within deep suffering. Lexi, the healer. Lexi, my healer.

Today, Lexi and I will sit at the base of the sandstone slope that rises, unreal and dreamlike, behind my home—its strata twisted by profound geological events during a time scale humans can barely fathom. It will be a glorious afternoon. We will do nothing. We will feel peace.

Telling Lexi’s Story

If you meet me when I’m with my dog, Lexi, chances are you’re going to hear her story. The story of how she lived during the first nine months of her life. The story of the woman who bravely stepped in when nobody else would and carried Lexi and her littermate out of a deplorable situation while both she and the dogs shook with fear.

The story of her frail, failing body. Her lack of food, water and shelter. The way she was locked in an outdoor pen with other breeds—some much larger than her and all of them puppies. Lexi was deemed unsellable, so she and her littermate were forgotten, left to fend for themselves when they didn’t even have the freedom to roam in search of shelter and sustenance. Lexi and her littermates were left to die. Some of them did. Around them, dogs barked and wailed. They slept on ground soaked with urine and excrement. The business of selling went on.

Lexi was born into the life of backyard breeding, a practice that’s ubiquitous in the United States. Like many states, the one in which Lexi was bred — by a person who saw dogs as a source of quick cash—provides insufficient legal protection to companion animals. What Lexi went through is not unique or unusual. It’s built into the business model for inhumane breeders whose cramped pens and suffocating buildings litter the country from coast to coast. Slow death and immeasurable suffering are a feature of these businesses, not a bug.

When I try to tell Lexi’s story, trainers almost invariably interrupt me early on to say something like this:

Dogs are resilient. If you hold onto that story, your dog won’t be able to move past it. You need to think about your dog’s future, not what they went through.

Agreed. But I’m not “holding onto” Lexi’s past. If anyone is aware of her resilience, it’s me. I see evidence of it daily, hourly, and minute by minute. What I’m doing is this: Raising awareness wherever I can about the horrific abuse and neglect that occurs in backyard breeding operations and puppy mills. I’m educating those in my community about dog abuse and neglect, as well as the effects of irresponsible breeding and pet overpopulation. Most people don’t know about any of those issues, especially not in sunny Southern Utah, where the scent of yesteryear still permeates the air and, on the surface, everything appears to be good and right and noble, always. Here, the unthinkable isn’t just unthinkable. It’s literally not thought.

Here, the unthinkable isn’t just unthinkable. It’s literally not thought.

Teaching the public through education and outreach programs is essential to getting the message out about dogs like Lexi, but so is giving those stories a face. Lexi is that face. While someone is marveling at how sweet and wonderful Lexi is, I can tell them a story they would never have imagined while all their senses are engaged. The listener can feel Lexi’s fur, gaze into her beautiful eyes, and smell that signature Cheetos odor wafting from her scraggly paws. The listener gets a serotonin boost while learning what Lexi and other dogs have to endure. Engaging the heart and mind together makes the teachable moment that much more powerful.

This is immersive education and storytelling at its finest. The subject is right there. She’s not a statistic or an abstraction. I’m able to make inroads with folks who might otherwise drift into local pet shops that source puppies from unethical breeders when they decide it’s time to add a dog to their family. Those stores’ pretty plexiglass display cases won’t hint at where the puppies came from. Their owners and employees won’t tell the truth. Instead, they’ll spin some yarn that has no veracity.

Lexi has to tell the true story. And because she can’t speak, I have to tell her story for her and with her. So I’ll continue talking about her trauma, as well her resilience and recovery. It doesn’t mean I’m living in the past or locking her into a figurative pen. Quite the opposite. Our stories can free us. They can also free listeners from ignorance, misunderstanding, and a lack of awareness. Lexi’s story is designed to ensure there’s no next Lexi. Mills must stop churning. Backyard breeding operations must close. Neither will do so willingly. Their market—folks like the ones I share Lexi’s story with—needs to dry up. Without demand, there will be no supply.

I’m concerned that some trainers are myopically focused on the client and dog they’re working with. They fail to see the bigger picture. They speak before they listen. How can they not understand the importance of telling stories like Lexi’s? Is it because they work with clients who have purebred dogs? Do they feel pressure from breeders in the community? Do they just not like hearing unpleasant stories? These trainers don’t recognize the implications of discouraging adopters from sharing their dogs’ stories, especially stories of trauma. I wish they’d reconsider shutting folks like me down.

Lexi is part of my family now. That means her story is my story. We walk through this world together, each of us with our own histories of trauma, each on our own healing path. Together, we’ll tell our stories in our own ways as long as we walk this earth.

Lexi

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, a couple surrendered three small dogs to a rescue where I volunteered. One of them was Lexi, a too-thin balding terrier mix. She was sweet but understandably confused and scared. The rescue was en route to Zion National Park, where the couple was headed as part of a multi-year RV trip they’d embarked on two months earlier. Their plan was to take all four of their dogs with them on the adventure. Something made them change their minds about traveling with the dogs. I suspect the endeavor was more difficult than they anticipated. Not all dogs like to travel. The constant motion, fluctuating temperatures inside the RV, and stress of being uprooted from their home may have caused the dogs considerable stress. Add to that the difficulty of managing so many pets throughout a long trip. I don’t think the couple knew what they were asking of their dogs or of themselves.

Lexi came to our home to spend Thanksgiving weekend with us. Another family had been fostering her, but they had a guinea pig. Lexi’s strong prey drive made that situation difficult for the fosters to manage. The day I picked her up, Lexi was dressed in a pale pink sweatshirt with the words “ROYAL FASHION PRINCESS” printed on the back in fat, glittery black letters. The acrid smell of floral laundry detergent wafted from the diminutive garment but failed to conceal the pet odors permanently embedded within it.

This is just for the long weekend, I told myself. When I learned about what Lexi had been through, I wanted to give her the best Thanksgiving she could have under the circumstances. Our home was calm and quiet. My husband Jon and I could give Lexi our undivided attention. I could focus on getting her to eat—she hadn’t eaten well since being surrendered—and I could begin assessing her apparent health issues. Bouba and Kiki had only been gone for a few days. It was, at once, too soon to have another dog in the house and exactly the right time to have another dog in the house. I don’t know how to describe our home without dogs other than to say the space feels heavy, lifeless, devoid of resonance—like someone playing a piano with one hand while muting the strings with the other.

It was, at once, too soon to have another dog in the house and exactly the right time to have another dog in the house.

Who do we have here, Jon asked when I got home with Lexi. He found her sweatshirt amusing, especially because it was far too small for her. Most of her long body was left uncovered, giving her the appearance of a teenager who’s shot up suddenly but is still wearing their old clothes. In fact, I had something similar as a teen—a pink Oklahoma Joe’s sweatshirt whose coverage of my arms and torso became increasingly insufficient during a growth spurt, but I loved it so much I had trouble parting with it.

We settled in on the sofa. I wrapped Lexi in a blanket and turned on the news. She fell asleep. The back of her ears, head and neck were bald save for a few scraggly hairs. I cried silently as I thought about Bouba and Kiki and about the scared but trusting little girl dozing on my lap. For two days, we spent the majority of our time like this. When I wasn’t walking, feeding or grooming her, Lexi and I were relaxing on the sofa watching news programs. (Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine yet, so the news was still relatively palatable.)

My feelings vacillated between happiness tinged with sadness and sadness tinged with happiness. I think Lexi had similar emotions. Her naps were punctuated by bouts of whining, crying, and exploring the house as if she would find her old life in one of the rooms. Incrementally, she came to understand that she was in a new place. Her other life wasn’t behind a closed door. Her former guardians weren’t going to pull up in the driveway, eager to see her again. The dogs she lived with and adored were somewhere else. The familiar sights, smells and sounds of her home in Texas were nowhere to be found. By the third day with us, she had stopped searching for her past. She had also started eating, which was a relief.

We began going on outings so I could do informal temperament testing with Lexi and see how she reacted in different environments. How would she do with people, with other dogs, with cats, and with wildlife? Would she be comfortable in expansive natural areas and in congested suburban spaces? Did she like water? Was she afraid of cars, side-by-sides or scooters? Did certain situations scare her? I created a spreadsheet to keep track of my findings. I hoped to provide potential adopters with information that would help them determine if Lexi was the right dog for them.

We took Lexi to Home Depot, Petco and Star Nursery. We visited Red Hills Desert Garden, Confluence Park, and a busy city park whose name I forget. She navigated every situation we encountered with ease, and people gravitated to her wherever we went. There was something uniquely lovely and disarming about her. Folks became emotional and opened up in her presence, mostly about dogs they’d loved and lost, but also about their lives and experiences, their hopes and fears. It was beautiful to watch Lexi bring that out in people.

We got her toys. We got her clothes. We got her puzzle games. And treats. And dog beds. And blankets. She could take them all to her new home, we reasoned. We discovered that she loves bully sticks and yak chews (a hard-cheese treat) most of all. She plays with them like toys, throwing them across the room and retrieving them before gleefully throwing them again. She even sleeps with a yak chew every night, cuddling it like a baby.

We learned that she likes to tuck herself in beneath a small blanket. We learned how tiny she looks when curls up to sleep. We learned that she loves smelling the world more than anything. When she seemed anxious, a slow sniffy walk immediately lifted her spirits. Wildlands surround our home in Southern Utah. There were myriad scents for Lexi to experience—many for the first time in her life.

Two things quickly emerged about Lexi: the first was her curiosity; the second was her fragility. I remember the day I first bathed her. I removed her sweatshirt and was afraid I’d break her in the process. I ran my fingers along her protruding ribs, her knobby vertebrae, and her soft, concave stomach. Energized by static electricity, the scant hair on her back pulled up and away from her skin as I coaxed the sweatshirt over her head. Overcome, I pulled her close and held her tight—something dogs don’t always like but she seemed to welcome—before carrying her to the bathroom.

Her fragile body made her curiosity even more remarkable. Despite her health issues and what she’d been through, she met the world with great interest. Even when she felt nervous or unsure, she wanted to know more about whatever she was encountering. Her curiosity helped her transition from her old life to her new one. Jon and I delighted in seeing her experience the world she was in now, the one we were helping her navigate.

Despite her health issues and what she’d been through, she met the world with great interest.

After the long weekend, Lexi stayed a few more days so she could see our veterinarian. We hoped to learn the cause of her weight loss and hair loss. During the appointment, we learned that her health issues might be more complicated than we anticipated. I wanted to keep her long enough to pay for additional medical assessments and treatments, but I realized that was beyond our role as fosters.

We discussed adopting Lexi ourselves but felt like it was too soon to make that commitment to another dog. We decided to pass Lexi’s medical information along to the rescue and continue fostering her until she was adopted. I took photos of her for Petfinder and emailed them to the rescue. Five minutes passed. I paced around the room. I looked at the photos. I looked at Lexi, who was attentively perched nearby. She resembled a troll doll with her wispy, cobweb-like facial hair and short, fine body hair. Her eyes were especially striking. Central heterochromia gives her irises the appearance of two chestnuts whose skin is catching the light on a sunny day. Dark pigmentation on her upper and lower eyelids resembles thick, almost goth, eyeliner. She stared at me with those dramatic eyes and with such clarity, innocence and trust my heart nearly burst.

I sent a feverish email to the rescue, then bolted out the door with an adoption form and a check. I drove straight to the rescue’s adoption center and said we wanted to adopt Lexi. It may have been too soon, but I didn’t want her to go to a home where her medical issues might not be addressed. I didn’t want her to go anywhere. I knew we could help Lexi in ways we weren’t able to help Bouba. It felt right for her to stay with us.

When I got home, I made a beeline for Lexi. Jon asked if she was ours. I said yes, but the truth is we were hers. We still are.

Because I Have Suffered

The birds are turning into flowers.

For Easter, I’m hiding peanuts around the yard for the birds.

Northern flicker: The last time I saw you, you were clinging to the sweetgum in the rain.

Don’t go, nuthatch. I was just learning how to watch you.

The American goldfinches are starting to look like marshmallow Peeps.

Today is rain and birdsong.

My yard is covered in puddles and juncos.

The red-winged blackbird returned to the yard today.

Haters gonna hate, but at least I get to come home to birds.

I miss the red-winged blackbird so much!

Today, I stopped to help a dog who was running loose. A woman came out of her house and said she wanted the dog to run into traffic and die. This kind of thing is why I’m a solitudinarian.

The Carolina wren loves to eat suet then sing from the silver maple.

After eleven days, the red-winged blackbird left me.

I love you more when you are with a dog.

Live alone, die alone. Live together, die alone.

Two days ago, I saw a male northern cardinal feed a safflower seed to a female.

I put down grass seed, and the birds ate it all.

It’s as if birds don’t care about lawns.

My skills include making the bed while my chihuahua is still in it.

A blue jay riffles through the leaves in my neighbor’s gutter.

Near the heronry, squirrels are busy making nests out of plastic grocery bags.

What have I done today? Nothing awful, I hope.

Today was strange because I didn’t see any hawks.

This half-tamed world is a respite from misery.

Red maple blossoms: How can I not have hope when I look at you?

Heartbreaking: As we age, we lose the ability to hear high-pitched bird songs.

You know who visited my yard today? A golden-crowned kinglet, that’s who.

Today, I misread the word “brides” as “birdies.”

My favorite chipmunk just climbed up the side of my birdbath and got a drink. So cute!

It’s almost time to put the hummingbird swings out.

A red-bellied woodpecker stashes safflower seeds in holes drilled by a yellow-bellied sapsucker.

Three blue jays gather in the nearest tree as I fill their peanut feeder.

When I stepped away from the window, the ice in the birdbath turned to water.

The hammock is covered in silver maple blossoms.

It’s hard to hear the red-winged blackbird’s melody when several hundred are singing asynchronously.

Here and there, mourning doves have settled into the earth like river rocks.

The male red-winged blackbird returned to my yard today. The greedy part of me is delighted.

I’m listening to the train and thinking about the juvenile Cooper’s hawk I saw this evening.

Two barred owls are singing to each other in my neighbor’s tree.

Two red-tailed hawks fight over rights to a marsh seeded with red-winged blackbirds. Each leaves with nothing.

Starling, your feathers are puddled motor oil on an asphalt road.

Nothing captures the entwined sense of desolation and hope more than a dead tree full of live birds.

The molting goldfinch is a half-painted canvas.

As soon as the Cooper’s hawk is gone, juncos pop out from their hiding places.

Two northern cardinals chase each other from tree to tree.

Bare trees flutter with finches.

The church bells next door don’t observe daylight saving time.

I dreamed the poet who assaulted me sent me a beautiful tree for my garden along with a note that read, “Keep quiet.”

We trimmed the trees but left the nesting cavities untouched.

I have a lot of time to look around.

A red-tailed hawk is perched on the tornado siren tower.

Moments don’t really exist, do they? They aren’t apart from anything else.

The robins wonder why I live in a structure on their land.

Help. I woke up with myself again.

I love it when blue jays let me in on their jokes.

The blue jay cried “kwirr kwirr” from the sweetgum as I filled the peanut feeder.

All morning, a blue jay has imitated a red-bellied woodpecker.

Every moment, I have a choice. Every breath, a choice.

Friendship formula for other people: time together + intentional self-revealing = feeling close to others. Friendship formula for me: time together + intentional self-revealing = feelings of panic, shame and fear.

I feel like I walked across a long bridge and nobody followed me. I stand here alone.

I don’t want you to be someone who enjoys more beauty. I want you to be someone who causes less destruction.

Tender, tender. Be tender.

Good writing is a bell ringing me back to life.

My mouth always feels like it’s falling off.

My life, as a whole, is divided into two parts: before trauma and after trauma. At this point, I barely remember before trauma.

Trauma passes through the gut in three hours, through the small bowel in four. It takes seventy-six hours for trauma to traverse the large bowel, but it never leaves the body. The undigestable parts stain fingers, swell joints, weave their way into every strand of hair.

I know when I don’t feel safe. I know when I don’t feel seen or heard. I know to avoid those situations whenever possible.

If the birds are in the trees, I want to be alone.

Like a scorned lover, the wind tore the mylar balloons to pieces.

Then: How can I make my life into art? Now: How I can just stay alive?

Sound is always leading me into ditches.

I feel like you used to be more than flowers.

Lie on the ground with me, neighbor. We’ll sort this all out when the wind dies down.

First Law of Wind: There is no wind without things.

Second Law of Wind: Great wind descends into stillness.

Third Law of Wind: You cannot escape from wind.

We can only know the wind through the things it touches.

You crossed the boundary long ago, so take what you want. This leaf. This seed. This wagon. This hoe.

Have my watering can and two-tiered birdbath, my chipmunk and his major and minor hoards.

What’s this? Your pill sorter. The chambers are chalky and taste like salt.

Your plastic will become my plastic. Your glass, my glass. I want your caps, your lids, your Juicy Juice boxes and their delicate little straws. Let it all blow my way.

I’ll retrieve your balloons with a cherry picker—deflated hearts that announce your love.

Take my birds as a sign of goodwill. Let them sing you back to joy.

I walk around picking up your branches, your receipts, your skiffs of tinfoil.

Your inflatable packing is strewn across my yard like entrails.

You once held the mylar balloons that quiver in the silver maple.

I come to know you through the things the wind blows from your yard to mine.

Snow. Wind. A pair of red-winged blackbirds clings to the crabapple.

You can tell a lot about a person from their detritus.

Dried hydrangea blossoms stumble along the culdesac, the wind’s playthings.

Two mylar Valentine’s Day balloons are stuck high in my neighbor’s silver maple. They aren’t just an eyesore; they pose a threat to area birds. This isn’t how you tell someone you love them.

Spring: Plastic bags snagged in the stubble field are turned into the soil.

First response to suffering: Because I have suffered, I don’t care about the suffering of others. Second response to suffering: Because I have suffered, I don’t want to see others suffer.

I laid the goldfinch to rest on a bed of moss and covered him with dried hydrangea blossoms.

Today, my Turin horse was a small bird who died because he tried to fly into the reflection of a tree.

If I hold your neck, will it unbreak? If I open your eyes, will you see? If I run my fingers along your feathers, will you fly? Summer is coming, your brightest season. Now you lay in my hand, your toes curling as if around a branch. I breathe and you don’t.

Unable to accept what is, I tried to will a dead goldfinch back to life today.

On new asphalt, the muddy tracks of Canada geese look like hieroglyphs.

There should be a brand of ice cream called Sorrow.

I kept one thousand words in a cage, then I set them free.

The next time you see a bird, know that part of me is with you.

Today, my Turin horse was a pair of bluebirds trying to nest in a construction zone.

Geometry

I found a heronry today near my home.

Birds froze to things last night: utility lines, branches, feeders. They left feathers behind when they flew away.

Geometry: two northern flickers—one on the utility pole, one in the sweetgum—and me, below, standing between them.

A European starling found a white feather and dropped it in the birdbath.

A blue jay used a peanut shell to bully other blue jays. He wielded it like a little sword.

Overhead, a single herring gull flew behind several ring-billed gulls.

I am as fussy as an American goldfinch.

I don’t know where the birds go at night, but I want to go there, too.

Songbirds slid off iced branches this morning.

The ground has thawed. Squirrels play in the wet grass.

Morning: A squirrel drags a dried hydrangea blossom to his nest in the silver maple.

The grackles arrived this morning. In the near distance, hundreds of Canada geese are moving north. Only a handful of juncos remain. One sings from the back fence.

I hear tapping on a nearby tree. Two red-bellied woodpeckers jag through the air. They needle the sweetgums then disappear.

I am mildly interested in leaving the house but only to go watch birds somewhere else.

Sunny and warm. Clear skies. Two geese fly past the tornado siren tower.

I live knowing there is a Turin horse in my future, a suffering so great it will finally break me.

Bird Blind

Even after I forget who I am, I think I will remember birds.

A feather floats to the ground. Whose?

Even after I forget who I am, I think I will remember birds.

The red-winged blackbird seems to be serenading a pair of courting mourning doves.

Over the din of construction equipment and yard tools, the male red-winged blackbird calls for a mate.

A red-winged blackbird has come to visit. What a surprise.

I imagine the field of no-ideas rustling with sparrows.

I’ve decided to come home to myself. I’ve been away too long.

I mean, my body has already come home to itself. My mind just got wind of it and is trying to take all the credit.

I feel a twinge of sadness when the American goldfinches fly off to my neighbor’s pin oak.

I feel bad about playing with boas when I was younger. I take feathers seriously now.

I waited all morning for the eastern bluebirds.

I watched birds for years without seeing them.

My house has become a bird blind.

I woke to bluebirds.

A yellow ball flies through the air: children playing.

The more I watch trees, the more I dream of trees.

Backlit birds and a bright gash in the dark sky.

A chipmunk scuttles home before the storm.

A blue jay covers a peanut with leaves before going back for another.

I don’t want to look at birds because I want to anticipate looking at birds.

The rain falls whether you think about it or not.

A wet house finch sings from my windowsill.

A World of Wounds

I enjoy feeding the birds.

A murmuration of starlings buzzed the cars on I-35 today.

The female northern flicker appears to have selected one of two suitors. The rejected male spent the day looking for the female. He sat in my yard calling for her. “Kyeer, kyeer. Kyeer, kyeer.”

The red-tailed hawk returned to the yard this afternoon. I have a crush.

These birds are my commitment remaining in the present.

I heard a blue jay cheep like a small songbird at the red-tailed hawk today. I’ve never seen that approach before, and I have no idea what informed the behavior.

I just played Vivaldi on my flute for the house finches.

Many people have an idea of what a bird is, but because they don’t pay close attention to birds, they don’t know what an actual bird is.

If you don’t pay close attention to birds, don’t write about them. Certainly don’t snare them in your nondescript haiku. Real birds deserve better than what you have to say about them.

I like men who walk their dogs in the woods.

Two paths trisect the snow-mantled yard: one to the birdbath, another to the bird feeders.

Juxtaposition: a brown creeper on the sweetgum, a bald eagle in the sky.

When I grow up, I want to spend all my time with birds.