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.