A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

Two poems by Merie Kirby

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 JournalSheila-na-gig OnlineWest Trade Review and Mom Egg Review, and other journals.

Visit her website:www.meriekirby.com

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