The bark beetle blight burns
across Nimshew Ridge
and every other slope
on the coast. Nimshew,
little water in the language
of the people who are gone
from here. The drought weakens.
The Roundup weakens.
Three acres behind my cabin
become a Union battlefield
in the time of Trump.
the fallen stacked, crisscrossed,
fifty score. Open blasting blue.
Exposure, some lid lifted.
This place will not be woods
again in our time. Ponderosas
are prognosticators. Township
to cul de sac, people will fall
to the blight they brought.
They bought it at the mall,
stacking containers and dust
collectors, widgets to plug
in that blink or smell.
Trappings made in Turkey
for holidays of distraction.
Let us be thankful.
First published in The Bees Are Dead.
Wren Tuatha’s poetry has appeared in The Cafe Review, Canary, Peacock Journal, Coachella Review, Baltimore Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Loch Raven Review, Clover, Lavender Review and others. She’s editor of Califragile. Her chapbook Thistle and Brilliant was a semi-finalist in the 2018 New Women’s Voices Contest and is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Wren and her partner, author/activist C.T. Lawrence Butler, herd skeptical goats on a mountain in California.
Photograph by Wren Tuatha.
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