The Waxwings Are So —

howling this year,

brown crests tipped back, 

open beaked to catch the drips,

they forage urgently for offerings 

in the canopy’s upturned hands. 

The cameras are so baying,

hand-held close ups of the barbules,

the black throats, so real-time senseless. 

What depravity, when to love is no longer enough, 

when the trees are wailing for the wind 

that cannot offer them shelter. When

we cannot give each precious bird all of our berries.

All that they need us to give.

The hawthorn is so screaming this year,

for the bloodshed, great mounds

of it piled on the altar,

begging for peace.

And everything scoured by the storm.

 JLM Morton