Yesterday dawn, eagles took showers in swirling mist.
I walked through the brown woods, face beaded with fog,
and even the stillness was wet.
Three pairs of cardinals settled in my yard and foraged,
the females tweeting eighth notes and the males’ long
glissandos: dancing valentines.
Yesterday morning late, the air turned to cold stone,
The wind meditated with deep breaths
in and out, the arthritic trees bending and moaning
I touched my tongue to the breeze, and it stuck, and I tugged away
and my tongue tasted coal and fish and juniper
and black-capped sparrow and clay.
Yesterday afternoon, a kestrel hovered midair, flapping its fast wings.
A rabbit screamed and leapt into a brush pile, clumps of its fur
impaled on the bramble bushes.
I watched the kestrel rise straight up and drop again, and field mice scurried
to the brush fort, and the predator moved on—food was everywhere.
Yesterday sunset, the clouds were Swiss cheese.
Stars and planets filled the holes, Orion stretching his belt and limbering
up for the voyage south. I leaned against the spruce tree
and watched deer shadows, heard wild violets crying to get out of bed
and tree frogs sighed and rolled over.
Yesterday night a barred owl posed the question: Who?
There were no answers but there was music of maracas
of budding trees and chattering teeth of feral cats.
I saw the river’s reflection flow across the meadow and fall into the
black sinkhole and sate the thirst of the dreamers of the dream state.
This morning, I lay in bed and felt for scars and lumps;
I saw my ravaged face, its eyes swollen, its teeth translucent
the skin all redness and greenness and yellowness—a man of color,
and I thought of yesterday’s landscape paintings, of the Painter,
of how painting is alienism:
Of how dreams drown in sleeping pill puddles.
—
Eugene Jones Baldwin writes poetry, prose, and essays about hiking along the confluence of the Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. The Yale University Climate Change Project featured his essay “The Five Seasons” in their national podcast. His book of nonfiction, The Genehouse Chronicles, contains writing about nature and interesting “river rats”. He is a playwright, freelance journalist, and a Tuskegee Airmen and Underground Railroad historian.
