vernal
my ritual sit, silently between two futon sleeping dogs
blue sky scraped dry by north winds, vernal equinox at
9 p.m. last night, but I didn’t detect a seismic shift in my
methodical ruin
a northern flicker blown in today fastidiously
circumnavigates a sumac branch, his theatre of self, a loud klee-yer.
Spring was the only season that could make Persephone blush.
The skinny woman who lives across the street went into detox,
her helicopter pilot neighbor drops in to feed the stricken dogs.
Just beneath the surface the mundane is aflame with tyrannical spirit,
frayed flags and red-eyed sleepless winters
we lost our tracks
somewhere concealed under snow, we lost track of
the soul’s resurrected red dusks, our fellow Americans
armed and concealed behind their shiverings⸺
I hope future extra-terrestrials speak Hopi or jazz
follow migrant trails into sweetened by rain ocotillo deserts
or into undersea mouths of speechless volcanos and have
mad visions of peace on earth
where every track a flower
every flower a cicada song that vanquishes the next
unheard of war, with its cease fires of troubled
sleep while Sandhill cranes lift off the bosque
legs dangling like antennae
high above
our ashes harried by the wind.
***
Corvids
A lone scrub jay breaks the air
over a pot of sagging zinnias,
the tiny Indian Summer suns fill the
disturbed earth with light.
The silence wakens with a start.
I learned corvids have sensory consciousness,
rituals, curiosity, bully pulpits, but a raven
won’t look at war and wonder, if God finds us
will he desert us?
A raven didn’t fly in just for the countdown
at Trinity Site or to nest in Oppenheimer’s hat.
I look around the sky and cannot imagine a poem
I’d want used to train AI, but in time they’ll
be able to train a crow to vote with its conscience,
I’m sure of it⸺
a vote for corvids is a vote for fun.
Today, the world has that omnivorous look in its eye.
Stellar’s jays will never lead a horse to water
but they’ve inhabited my fever dreams, my
aislings, my lullabies for more years than
I can count
with their Indian Summer flocks
their untrained presences of mind.
***
winter haiku for Annie
waning moon at dawn
feathery logjam of clouds
grey wolf’s river howl
Poet, playwright and essayist John Macker has lived in Northern New Mexico for 28 years. His most recent books of poetry are Belated Mornings; Atlas of Wolves; The Blues Drink Your Dreams Away: Selected Poems 1983-2018 (2019 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards finalist); El Rialto (a memoir); and Desert Threnody, essays and short fiction (a 2021 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards winner for fiction anthology). For several years, he was a contributor to Albuquerque’s Malpais Review. His trilogy of one-act plays, Black Range Trilogy, was produced by Teatro Paraguas in Santa Fe in 2023.