My mother was a bird long of neck, 
wading in slate waters and afraid 
to fly a gray choking sky 
peppered with cracking snaps 
shot off by a Browning Gold 10. 

Those wingless aliens 
had no home in the wood, 
appeared in deafening shells 
no hermit crab could conceive, 
and wielded such branches 
that splintered, shattered 
so far, no feather was free. 

Every branch bore a new name, 
but Browning Gold was always 
her hunter's choice. Hiding 
was no option, for dogs also came, 
traced and chased her 
into the sky. Three times 
he tried, but she'd found a path 
her own, untouched by human 
trampled trails by tire or track. 

Yet one day her left wing was clipped, 
and a flurry of feathers floated down 
like angels of snow falling to forest 
ground, spinning against the globe, 
she soiled her elegant neck in the mud 
but it did not break. She wouldn't let it. 

My mother stood up, trudged along, 
found me and nudged me 
to our known home for a final rendezvous, 
a risky siesta before our voyage 
through her path away from his body. 

His body, drowned in the lake he dared 
cross to find hers, impatient 
for the dog to drag her into his shell. 
But still—a parasitic threat, 
a polluted lure for the rest of the hounds. 

She lived, always prey and always guarded. 
She taught me to reside beside 
the sunken railroad in the alligator rushes. 

Preview from my upcoming 2023 collection The Soul Without a Summer