Bridge / Insurrection
Flimsy expanse between two unknowns, my bridge sags like a branch dragged down by squirrels, marauding twitchy bullies who empty the feeder of seed, elbow out the dusk-colored birds that congregate in winter
and weigh almost nothing: juncos dipped in milk, cinnamon wrens, their feet like brittle elderberry stems, alight, latch onto a seed and carry it into the bushes to eat alone, one by one, over and over. I worry the energy they expend negates calories accrued, but it’s a winter
overfull with worry, so I add it to the bucket: new variants, insurrection, 6MWE. I reckon with what I can allow, how much seed lost, how much more I can lose. The bridge between us is too wide, this winter
too long. I devise a contraption, akin to a bridge, from a rope and pulley. It slows the squirrels, but they adapt, time the swing of the rope and launch themselves at the feeder. They need to eat, get through the winter
like the birds, like me, all of us trying to make it, and sometimes they land, cling to the cold metal perches for a minute or two, but mostly they miss, and I laugh when they hit the ground, feel guilty and sorry. See how my bridge is burned.
* * * * *
On Sundays They Shoot at Nothing
And I am planting flowers.
The new year is coming.
And the shooters return every Sunday, designated hours, dawn to dusk.
Thick fog and I can almost imagine I’m somewhere else.
Each shot reverberates.
My old dog raises his head, deaf, but he feels it.
My husband is in year two of a diagnosis.
The shooting range is pretty, with picnic tables beneath a rustic shelter.
I’ve never seen anyone eating there.
No one knows how long it will take my husband to die.
Each person is different.
I don’t know what they shoot at.
Silhouettes of torsos, cardboard cut-outs, concentric circles.
The weather has been unpredictable.
Supply chain disruptions continue, but still we have food on the shelves.
I did buy extra. In case. I did think about getting a gun.
No one I know has died recently from the virus.
And I’m boosted.
In the last school shooting students escaped through a window.
They filmed it. I didn’t want to watch but I did.
I cry in the car when I’m driving.
A friend calls it titering my grief.
Like letting air out of a balloon, a little at a time.
Spellcheck wants to make it tittering. Almost the opposite.
Almost the same. Laughing just a little bit.
* * * * *
Ideas
I’ve run out of ideas but keep going, even though many of us are quitting, leaving for the first time in droves. Drove, as in drover or driven, as in cattle, herded by a few guys on horses. What drives beasts to be driven? We buy into things. Ideas about ourselves. I’m good at this, not that. We box ourselves in, drag the heavy gate behind us, stare longingly out at the plains. I was a good student until I wasn’t. Didn’t apply myself. After a point. After geometry, when we got to equations where X is a stand in for something else. I couldn’t get X. But I liked our handsome substitute teacher so effort forthcame. X marks the spot where I began to innocently lust. Yearn. Whatever you want to call it so it doesn’t sound dirty. At that age yearning was potent but abstract. I wanted someone to shine light on me, to be X. I wanted out of the pack. I wanted to howl. Maybe I wanted to kill but I knew where the fences were. I licked salt from the rails, swished my tail, ruminated.