What the Morning Leaves Behind
I woke this morning
to the thick breath of heat,
a humid Sunday rising slow as regret.
The tulip tree leaves hung there,
backlit like stained glass in a forgotten chapel,
and beneath the sagging feeder,
a ragged pile of feathers—gray, white, brown—
strewn across the grass,
as though something holy had been torn apart
in the night.
Fox, coyote, hawk—
it hardly matters.
Something lived, and something else lived longer.
I stood there,
thinking how easy it is to mistake hunger for cruelty,
but the air was already moving on,
taking the story with it.
From the television in the sitting room,
the voice of a tired reporter cracks
over the flash flooding on the Guadalupe,
bodies pulled from the brown water,
while the ban on transgenders from the military takes hold,
quiet as a closing door.
-----------------------------
Note: Another poem reflecting James Wright's style
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