Extinct Today

by John Grey
 
So what in the world's gone now,
what forest, stream or maybe
parking lot, housing estate,
acquired its unknown absence.
 
No scrape, no whistle,
no pouncing on some tiny woodland
creature that has no clue how
much safer life's become.
 
Who marks down these things?
Who listens for the unheard echo?
Imagine it. Entire populations
of living creatures gone like some people.
 
No, you can't imagine it.
You don't know what to imagine.
So where’s the smooth handfish?
What about the harlequin frog?
 
Has anyone seen the stubfoot toad?
Or the spined dwarf mantis?

Now if you only had the corpse.
But no one knows one's needed.

Lines

by John Grey

December twilight
stand of naked chestnut oaks
erased by darkness

Carrion

by John Grey

The crows perch on the upper branches,
three glossy-coated undertakers
clucking how good they have it.

On the roadway below,
small mammals chance their luck,
are surprised to find they have none.

Squirrel squashed overnight,
the crows drop down for burial rites,
their beaks for pall-bearers,

stomachs for coffins.
Occasional cars interrupt the ceremony.
But these birds are not at risk from traffic.

Their radar sends them skyward
should anything approach.
Then the coast clears, the service recommences.

The crows are no choir. No mistaking them
for summer warblers. Their loud caw celebrates
a reverent feast, a glorious interment.

A Florida Swamp

by John Grey

A solitary egret rides in
on a floating island.
Mangrove twine
sips brackish water.
Snake slithers through the tangle,
            upends a log
            of painted turtles.     

Now and then,
fish pop the surface
            Swamp, sleeping water.

A frog’s throat drums.

Awaiting Aesop

by John Grey

Jackrabbit’s scat is nothing much but,
under the circumstances, it’s the best that he can do.
But it invokes all kind of activity.
Like the dung-beetle that appears from nowhere.
rolls the crap into a little ball,
gets it moving with the power
of its feathery hind legs.

The pride-bound hare has no appetite for dung,
boasts long ears instead of a hard carapace,
flutters whiskers like a lord at high tea
while his stomach hungers like the living for the dead.
Meanwhile, the ball forces the beetle vertical,
threatens to roll back, crush its body,
but tenacious, unyielding, it nudges the treasure forward,
over pebble, in and out of small ditch,   
until both insect and ball disappear from the jackrabbit’s view
into its underground den..

Dung-beetle no longer of interest, reader and hare
dart off into ribbons of heat, fur like stubble,
chest made slender by the lack of good grasses,
the tough dry chew of the few that survive the oppressiveness,
No succulent carrots. No celery. No apples fallen from a tree.
And all the while, his crap is fueling who knows
how many of these insignificant creatures.
As if being outrun by a tortoise wasn’t enough.
Now, as far as the desert is concerned,
Leporidae has been out-evolved by the dung-beetle.
He rests by a rock, salivating on better times.
His sensitive hearing can almost hear the fable being written.

Freeze

by John Grey

Wind enough to sweep the lake of snow,
down to bare ice, particles of light,
stunted trees tinted, rock-stubble beach,
grass, a beleaguered brown, where poking through the white.

Half moon, horned owl in repose,
pine's dead branch, oblique stillness,
field mouse running in his head,
so dark, a silhouette,
eyes beam though the hooded grace
of the invisible, no sound
but the bounce of his heart.

Inspecting the Damage

by John Grey

I’m a friend to the lost
so farewell, alders, cedars.
My breath is a bell-tower
ringing silently.
Day’s sad light spreads
to include the few
Douglas firs not dragged away.

Suffering, pain,
echo of a buzz-saw,
bitterness,
everything oily to the touch,
senses at the crossroads,
hemlocks, moss, maidenhair,
mud-spattered grass, mushrooms –
the wreckage of yesterday’s logging –
scorched earth unveils its meaning.

New Hampshire Morning

by John Grey

Black bear snug in tree fork,
morning sun gilds its fur tips,
turns a fluttering nose to amber.
Crows line the upper oak branch.
Blue jays spread the word -
corvids present - such as they are themselves
chickadee awareness descends in notes.
A solitary cooper's hawk
scours the waking trails for meadow mice.
A groundhog stands on granite soap box.
His mate nibbles the grass nearby.
A rabbit, the whole world to fear,
skitters into nearby brush.
It's spring. Rivers bulge with snowmelt.
Current flings fish into the air.
A great blue heron stalks
the outskirts of a beaver pond.
A chipmunk squeaks, red squirrel chatters.
Maple, poplar, blush with new green.
A vulture keeps a quiet watch for death.
Wart-headed turkeys sway their chest beards.
Nature, unattended, embraces dawn.

Barred Owl

by John Grey

Just beyond
a late spring day,
the darkness
its pedestal

hooked head,
talons splayed,
brown dappled wings wide,
it cruises the feathery lace
of fluttering dragonflies
blown across the marsh
then over black-smoked brush,
the inky ponds,
and up onto an oak branch

where round night-eyes
scour the night for fear,
ears track screams
about to burst...
a mouse,
a vole,
a chipmunk...

somewhere in the dark,
he stares at
what he later eats.

On One More Drought Day

by John Grey

Wind whispers why the rain won't come
to brown wheat,
to bony cattle,
to falling fence posts.

In the sweltering bar,
beer, underwear crackle,
random hugs eschew the feral hormone smell.

Beneath the rickety bridge,
old shoes ride brown current
to the death.

Weatherman flutters about
on a storefront television,
paints the screen a torrid red.

Wind whistles through
the silence of the cop
steering his car in circles.
July thickens his brow
with gluey sweat.

On melting sidewalks,
by dried up marshlands
and burnt-out gardens,
old men, heads buried in each other's,
whisper the past into better shape
than the searing present.