Phenology
No lies, just my life,
lived wrong-headed
perhaps. The yard
lambent with grass.
Every spring there,
a cottontail, in a bush
a crow. Along the wall,
a doe bedding down.
And though I’ve never
seen one pregnant, each
year a fawn or two—
once even three,
all caution, ambling,
and spotted. Every year
the seasons passed
at the empty lot next to
the four-way stop,
the signs proclaiming:
Gun Show [mud] Boat Show [manure] Car Show [pollen] County Fair [hay] Craft Fair [frost]
This was my life, though
perhaps unremarkable
and only self-evidenced.
A window to look out,
a patch of grass
where something will
eventually lay itself,
come to rest.
[The earth must be a human thing]
The earth must be a human thing,
the way it burdens and unburdens
itself with snow. Worries stone
with wind. Throws fits, fist-
fulls of spark and storm, rages
with fire raised from those
furies. To think we used to call
these acts of gods. Who
wants a god so changeable,
able to drop sixty degrees
in seconds? Who banks our prayers
and promises in fog, where
there is no answering
back? No, the earth appears
in shine and shade, in wrack
and recklessness, entirely
human-made. Its binding-up
and brokenness, it is our own,
whether we decide to stay,
or are able to.
Jory Mickelson (they/them) is the author of Wilderness//Kingdom, inaugural winner of the Evergreen Award Tour from Floating Bridge Press and winner of the 2020 High Plains Book Award in Poetry. They live and write in Northwestern Washington amid the moss and mud.
Header photo by Tony Campbell, courtesy Shutterstock.
