Poem of the Week: New Cut in the Woods

Martha Steger, Lifetime Member-at-Large, Richmond, Virginia

 

Imagine an unattended baby-seat strapped

to a tree for thrush-eggs’ nourishment but

sabotaged by cowbirds’ sinister deposits in

this tiny home held together by spiders’ webs

along the new cut in the woods. Surreal is

the circling brown-headed parasite in my

view on this path bulldozed for human

habitation, with cribs and swing-sets to

replace fledgling thrushes that are not to be,

as the dealer wins at the house table while

the song of life goes on like Darwin’s finches

and the wildly flapping albatross flailing across

marshlands looking to plummet but uncaring

as it takes off for heights unknown. How hard

the search for my true self in Calvin or Confucius’

blades of grass and bittersweet experience,

while monks must hear the flute-like songs and

see threads of ongoing rebuilding, silken flux.