Merie Kirby, Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA
Backyard Quartet
i.
This month I watched the forests of my childhood burn
on the tiny screen of my phone. I feel safer than I should,
far from the mountains and the sea, the places
I call home despite nearly thirty years’ absence.
My friends’ days are thick with smoke, their skies
made orange by ash. It is harder to breathe
than it should be, they say, but they are safe.
The days here, in the northern center of the country,
are shortening, veering from unseasonably warm
to prematurely cold, the damp chill already slowing
my own lungs. My imagination is a dry barrel
perched above my shoulders,
humming with worry.
ii.
The smaller evergreen is gone now, the one that snapped
in half last summer, victim of straight line winds,
the rooted half finally dug out. The taller tree
stands alone in the yard.
And today a squirrel, fur lit by late day sun,
runs across the new emptiness,
up the post of the deck, to face the house and,
one paw clutched to chest, leaning forward,
chatters sharply at the house. A scolding? A protest?
A message of great intensity, issued twice.
Then with a hopping turn,
the squirrel runs back down the post,
around behind the garage, and out to the alley.
iii.
Sometimes I am the dog,
nose to the boards of the deck,
knowing the rabbits are down there,
oblivious to the not-rabbit.
I have also been the birds, darting
from branch to branch,
stopping to sing out and listening
for an answer.
These days I think I am the rabbit,
pressed to earth beneath a threat
that huffs above me,
but has not caught me yet.
My heart beats too fast
as I keep myself still
in the dark,
hoping for sleep.
iv.
Whatever color of yellow that is, he says, is kind of
my favorite color right now
yellow ochre of elm leaves above rusted blood of ivy
withered brown of wasting basil
gray-winged moth lifting from beneath curled leaf
ashy smudges of cloud against fading peach to periwinkle sky
moon lit pink by setting sun
flames along the arm of burning bush and vermilion coleus above pale aster
darkening blue green heavy evergreen bough
tawny curve of squirrel gulping the chocolate spine of fence
dusky streak of dog chasing rabbit whispers to the back gate
silhouettes of swallows arrowing from tree to tree
nothing and everything as safe as can be.
Let the record show
Dear ghost tree, fir tree, tree
that is no more, your shadow doesn’t fall
across the grass, the little dog doesn’t run
to your trunk to relieve himself. He crosses the space
you used to inhabit, stops at the fence,
pauses and looks back. What used to be there?
What am I forgetting? Our neighbor, the city arborist,
remembers you were planted before the 1996 flood,
though your trunk never felt those waters,
the Red River never came closer than two blocks.
That’s what he tells us, but surely your roots,
stretching and feeling their way into new ground,
spreading laterally from your tap root, heard the news
of the river that overflowed the banks, dismantled
schools from foundations, surrounded burning buildings
and soaked possessions into refuse. Your companion,
planted at the same time, not ten feet from you,
still stands, center of the yard, its long shadow arcing
over house and grass and vegetable garden.
Do its roots still reach for yours, fibers finding empty earth
instead of once familiar tendrils in shared soil?
Trees, they tell us now, share nutrients and information
through overlapping root systems. When one station
shuts down, where does the signal go?
Does it linger in soil, broadcasting breaking
of trunk, fury of storm, force of winds,
dying of branches, the way we emerged
from the house in the lessening rain
to clear branches and lay hands on fractured wood?
Merie Kirby earned her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota. She lives in Grand Forks, ND and teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. In 2016 and 2013 she received North Dakota Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grants. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Quartet Journal, Sheila-na-gig Online, West Trade Review and Mom Egg Review, and other journals.
Visit her website:www.meriekirby.com