Window: White Pine

It’s been a little while since I shared some bummer bird poetry. This one has the marvelous distinction of having been broadcast into a dark Scottish forest. My other poems are still a little jealous.

Window: White Pine

I.

Chaos in
the predawn dark—
starlings scream

II.

Robbing the open
pinecone, rewarded again
and again—chickadee

III.

The jay’s alarm—
Stranger! Stranger! Stranger!—
swallowed by the wind

IV.

Streetlight caught
in the raindrops caught in the
orb weaver’s web

V.

The owl arrives
soundlessly. The night
holds its breath.

VI.

i haven’t been outside since it happened

*

Photograph: Tyler Jamieson via Unsplash. This poem was previously published in SPROUT: The Nature of Cities and, as mentioned, read to the trees.