Of the crop duster drifts through my window
like a helicopter looking for a landing.
Birds sing and flit around the feeders
But where are the butterflies?
What is a will-o'-the-wisp?
What is a whip-poor-will?
The bees that escaped their hives in protest
Of a neighbor’s rough handling swarmed
My porch, my yard, my window screens.
After two days, they rediscovered their hives
And lifted the siege. I went to the grocery.
The anniversary of a death approaches
But I’m not a Buddhist to celebrate the end.
I’m not pining like the doves who coo
From the highwire from where they see what they see
But where are the butterflies? Where are the pond frogs?
The crop duster returns in the evening to herald dusk
the way frogs once did.
A murder of crows caw from the top of a tree
struck by lightning. Will they remember my face?
Written for Poets and Storytellers who challenge us to write something both spooky and summery (summerween!). Nothing is spookier here in the lowlands of Southeast Michigan than the constant drone of the cropduster. What they are doing can't be seen, like the roots of a tree.
And for dVerse Poets who gave us a poem from Pablo Neuvda's Book of Questions, Why do trees concal their roots? a poem that prefers questions to answers."