Shallow Roots

by Lisa M. Hase-Jackson

An Eastern Fox Squirrel
comes to visit the rogue sunflower
that popped up beneath the bird
feeder in my mother’s back yard,
picking out seeds to cache in his
cheeks, chattering at neighborhood
cats and black birds perching
in uncomfortable proximity.

They swoop down from the sky,
those birds, stirring up the Missouri
sky into a roiling summer storm,
their zephyr wings a vortex
of torrents and fulminations.