Ephemera

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?

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.

Light-Catchers

A staircase of shelf fungus scales the side of a hawthorn tree.

All around me, the ground undulates. Robins shovel leaves in search of food. “Do what you want to do” floats into my mind as clear as birdsong.

A Carolina wren sings a medley that includes the song my wren at home sings. B-flat followed by G-flat, repeated five times.

A female hooded merganser sleeps on a sheet of ice, her mate nowhere in sight. Upstream, a great blue heron squats low in the water, drenching its chest.

I like talking with the old men who don’t seem to have anyone.

Hawthorn tree: Your fungus is soft, your spikes hard. This is life.

At home, I get out my piccolo and play along with the birds.

A child screams like a hawk—or maybe a hawk screams like a child.

Frozen water droplets hang from the branches like thousands of crystal balls. Light-catchers, these drops tell our future.

Trees shred the wind. My dog sleeps.

I feel like the dark-eyed junco in my yard who has the excreta of another bird stuck to its tail.

Language is in my fingers these days, not my mouth.

I am ill and screaming like a starling.

Even the noisy house sparrow calls me back to the present.

My thoughts yellow like old paper.

Winter: Snow remains in the shadow my house casts.

Life: looking down to see the remains of a dead bird at your feet.

Bare tree limbs speak to each other in Morse code.

Life is better since I started pointing my camera away from me. By camera, I mean mind.

The Lake of the Morning

A therapist told me that EMDR changes the brain without conscious effort. Guess what else does that? The earth. Go outside.

The Cooper’s hawk perches on a silver maple. “Consciousness is terror,” I think.

How do I begin to describe a thousand snow geese on open water?

I belong. Say it with me. I belong.

My day started with the Cooper’s hawk killing a starling in my yard.

I decided a change of scenery was in order and went to the lake, where I saw two eagles mutilating a Canada goose. Next, I stumbled upon a hawk who had eaten a dark morph snow goose down to its wings.

I almost forgot to mention the dead trumpeter swan frozen on the lake in the most heartbreaking death pose.

The lake of the morning is not the lake of the evening is not the lake of midday.

Two hawks. No songbirds. Silence.

This afternoon, I watched a squirrel carrying leaves up to his home inside my silver maple.

The squirrels took the nest away from a northern flicker, who was upset today upon returning home only to find it occupied.

The squirrels need the nest because they are going to have a litter. The flicker needs the nest for protection from the elements.

Once you love birds, you have to love trees. Then you have to love soil and air. Berries and seeds and insects and arachnids. Sun. Rain. Wind. Water. And everything. You have to love everything.

I breathe the same air the birds breathe.

The despair. Don’t look at it. Look up.

Evening burns blue. Amnestic, darkness shrouds the tree canopy.

Road Ends in Water

The snow is frosting sprinkled with nyjer seed.

Geese fly by so low I’m afraid they’ll get snagged on the sweetgums.

Crack. Crack. Swallow. Crack. Crack. Swallow. A blue jay shells peanuts and caches them in his expandable throat.

What is the yellow-bellied sapsucker still doing here?

There’s a sweetness to birders, like the time two women barreled across Heritage Park to make sure I’d seen the bald eagle.

Sign: Road ends in water.

Ice on a lake sings like someone playing one thousand saws.

Next to a white horse, a brown horse with a white face.

Out in the freshly tilled field: meadowlarks.

Through the dead grass, I see a man fishing.

A funeral procession passes as I stand in the field looking at meadowlarks.

Because the water is frozen, snow geese have landed in a field.

From a sparrow identification guide: The field sparrow’s song “sounds like a ball bouncing down to rest.”

I met a birder today on top of a dam. Her name is a combination of the words candelabra and mandolin. We saw pelicans.

Meadowlarks and starlings fly back and forth—low in the field—as if performing reiki on the earth.

Home: glass strike; no body. I am lousy with concern.

The woman with the beautiful name taught me how to pronounce the word merganser.

Rock pigeons stand on a frozen marsh.

Rural Kansas: the geometry of utility poles and power lines.

Vellum

First snow, first junco tracks.

A spot of clean ground. This is where the rabbit laid while snow fell.

Sapphire sky beneath a sheet of vellum.

The winter sky has netted a colony of ring-billed gulls.

The chill carried a pine siskin to my yard.

Christmas morning. The Carolina wren sings.

At the top of the sweetgum tree, a tail flicks.

Winter: The dogwood blooms with finches.

House finch: Your crown is dried blood.

Northern flicker: You carry the sun under your wings.

All day I saw the Carolina wren. Still, I felt such loneliness.

We’ve been apart for so long that I can finally think of you fondly.

A little boy rides his new toy up and down the street.

One of the juncos drags its long toenails through the snow.

There and then not there: the chickadee.

The blue jays have me surrounded.

Now the blue jays are gone. They’re off mobbing a hawk.

No shadow like a hawk’s shadow.

When I’m with birds, it doesn’t matter that I’m not with people.

The songbirds exit stage right. The Cooper’s hawk enters stage left.

Winter: A great blue heron slips on a frozen marsh.

Today, a man touched me on the arm. I did not know him.

Cabinet of Curiosities

My neighbor’s back porch looks like a cabinet of curiosities.

Note from an eBird user: American tree sparrow seen near artificial flowers at roadside memorial.

Church bells in the morning. Train whistle at night.

I follow a falling leaf almost all the way to the ground before realizing it’s not a bird.

The day is a glass marble being rolled toward the light.

Cardinal: You glow like a ruby in a tarnished ring.

A tree grows inside an old silo.

We just rescued a yellow-rumped warbler who was stuck in a park toilet.

American robin: You look like a stone fruit.

Spurred by a crow’s alert, more than thirty cedar waxwings shook off the Bradford pear in which they had flickered and lolled.

Meadowlarks bound through a freshly cut field as if directing a singalong.

Brown creeper: You look like a small knot on this Brobdingnagian tree.

In the quiet field, flying sparrows sound like cards being riffle-shuffled.

Western meadowlark: You’ve thrown your drab office blazer over your couture evening dress.

I look up to see the birds in my yard flying between bubbles. I look over to see a neighbor and her child playing with a soap bubble machine.

Canada goose: On takeoff, your wings sound like umbrellas opening and closing at full tilt.

Chickadee at Old Longview Lake: Your deformed foot doesn’t keep you from vaulting like an aerialist.

I saw an orange house finch today. I think this is the fellow who sings me awake each morning.

The blue jays seem to be testing shell peanuts for weight before making their selections.

Twenty-eight robins just landed in my sweetgum tree.

Two house sparrows fight over a feather.

Evening: The birds darken.

Two Carolina wrens hunt for spiders in my silver maple’s trunk flares.

This is the best thing I’ve read all day: Carolina wrens defend their territories with constant singing.