Constant cicadas

It’s hard to rest til August

Mosquitoes diving.

Will they be spent like the summer I was 12
Crossing our flat town with streets named for eastern trees and ivy colleges
Riding my chartreuse bike
To the downtown Woolworth
For lemon coke at the counter
And bubble gum lipstick.

Begging for September.

Would you actually advise Nature to
Tidy herself up
Dispense with storm fallen limbs
Blow away last Autumn’s long dead leaves

Or will you take it upon yourself
To decide for all time
What brings Her joy?

Astonishing masses of white
Did not know then the leaf distinction between
rhododendron and azalea bushes
(more familiar with semi-arid geraniums and trumpet vines).

What sold me on this ordinary wartime brick  bungalow
Built by racist hands.

For two springs now no buds or blossoms,
Through age or neglect
Time to lop off the non-producing branches, force a show
Or time to go?

All house chores are done
The old terrier finds the patch
Of scrubbed back door tile.

The purebred Georgia possum was once a highly intelligent animal that was much revered by the Creek (and Cherokee Indians). They were so respected by the native Georgians that they constructed rock formations, much like the rock eagle located in Eatonton, in honor of the possum. The Georgia possum bloodline became tainted when a few drunken Georgia sow possums submitted to the much inferior Alabama boar possums. The Alabama males came into Georgia with the hopes of breeding with the Georgia sows because the Alabama sows were so ugly. As a result of these improprieties the Georgia bloodlines were indeed tainted. We at the GPBA are dedicated to renew the Georgia possum back to the intelligent animal it once was by a stringent and selective breeding process. If you are a true Georgian you will join the cause. (Georgia Possum Breeding Association)

Cascade Canyon

Called possum crossing
Midnight route from chained up woods
Through the car slicked streets.

Dozens of them struck
Tails stilled on the dark shoulders
Dead before morning.

Don’t see them around
After so many murdered
A disappearing.

An aerial view
City of Trees canopy
Close up unravels.

At ground level
Invasives infestation
A strangled dying.

Our Champion Trees
Oldest “heartiest” species
H-E-A-R-Tiest

Hearty might save them.

Hampton Beecher Preserve. Seven Thirty on a Friday morning in August. We are greeted by a chimney swift (they have learned to nest in these), mockingbirds, a fish crow off course or perhaps happy enough to find the Utoy Creek, garbage crusted but now running clean.

Towhees, cardinals, titmouse, nuthatches, Carolina wren. Chatting, fussing, protecting what remains of Southern hardwood, pine, and native bushes; telling each other what they are and where they are, warning as we pass by.

A hawk circles the power line easement, accidental meadow. I spot a drably colored hummingbird in the wetland grasses, rare this year. Too soon to tell if they are bypassing or vanishing.

Hundreds of years old first growth forest chopped down for lumber, for re-construction (and profit) after the Civil War. Only the flawed trees remain: lightning seared, beaver gnawed, axe grazed, healing over their wounds.

Wood owls have disappeared (or nearly).

The migratory flyway still appears green on green but wrong. We see less and less of the Cerulean warbler, small sky-blue bird, and a species of concern that does not recognize this habitat or perhaps it is the cell towers that dwarf the familiar resting places. They fly on, exhausted.

Flycatcher. Eastern wood-peewee. Red-eyed vireos. A downy woodpecker. I record them on my smartphone notepad. Their calls fade as the heat rises. Fourteen birds captured for a life list. I do not know enough to know what once was here and lives no more.

Stunning in their endurance, despite the chain saws and the sewage spills, the mounds of old tires, garbage, plastic bottles that blanket creek banks. Despite the invasive plants: the English Ivy, Privet and Chinaberry trees that were carried here for decoration, for erosion control, literally smothering the natives. The million year plants that have persevered, even resurrected in the living soil of a nearly extinct forest.

The wary coyotes that still patrol their territory. The frogs and herons that find the remaining clear running streams, the almost hidden springs. The watchful resident birds and the migrating warblers who still nest and rest from their long journeys, despite human incursion, degradation and care-lessness.

I have-relearned something about resilience from this moody summer, drowning and baking the land, from this overlooked place. How living things want to live. How a centuries’ old tree, a lucky accident of survival, can generate and sustain new growth. How limbs may flexibly bend and not break, but even when limbs break, life can refashion itself. Gaping holes can shelter magnificent mushrooms. Creek beds can fill up, change course in a single afternoon, whether or not we can bridge over them.

To survive