The Earth dreams
this devout forest
and if I'm paying attention,
me as well.

Couriers of peace;
shields against the torpedoing sun;
billowing villages full of swallows,
finches, cardinals, wrens and
the reverent jay:

You were always here like
the air and the rain—
a backdrop to all our
breathless living.

Don't the pillagers know this
as they chew through centuries and
mist-scented towers and
the joy we become and
send them sprawling,
statuesque and glistening,
to our deaths?

Please, don't take these.
I'll stand here like Saint Michael
against the infernal legions
and guard them till
some distant, quivering dawn
brings reason and they'll live,
yes, perhaps another hundred years
or more, they'll live.

A jay watches from the vantage point
of knowing there is nothing left
but now.

Dear exalted one,
Your Eminence:
Don't you hear my jackbooted
world closing in?
Where will you go, you with the nest
of celestial songs, you with wings like
postmodern art?

She stares at something I cannot see.

In perfect trust,
she loves her life.


Patricia Joan Jones