Monday's poem and the apocalypse

The world sure feels overwhelming right now. Fires, and the pandemic. Earthquakes and images of desperation as people cling to an airplane in a country fallen into terror's hands.

It all feels too much.

I am hiding in the woods today. Touching trees and lingering on leaves of hope for tomorrow.

Today's poem is by Marie Howe

The Bird

Even when I held my hands over my ears

I could hear the sirens squealing down the avenue:

somebody else's trouble: broken or

bleeding or burned: and the through the porch windows

a bird in the ash tree kept calling out: bleating,

like the hungry cry of a human child and wouldn't stop.

Even when I opened the window

and yelled at the bird, it bleated on

the way a child does when you shake it.

Down the four flights to the courtyard of the building

I could still hear it,

and around the corner to the mailbox: there too.

Cool Hand Luke finally said: Just don't hit me again Boss. Please

just don't hit me again.

And his men turned against him and spit in his food.

No attic anymore; no stumbling drunk, he's dead;

no belt; no pencil; no safety pin,

only a summer afternoon in a small city: porch windows,

bird singing. How many hands does a city have?

Yesterday each one was a sound.

And the bird's trouble? It must have gotten solved

--all that insistent complaint.

By the time I fell asleep, it was quiet.