Psalm XXXI
a chickadee had perched on the windowsill like a message
generated by the mist, October
was turning into November in the birches oaks alders,
in the frost-resistant flowers, in the cemeteries
where our fathers wrote no memoirs,
where they would not recognize our children, our
poems, ourselves. The television was showing Poland
that had perished, and then had not perished, and then
again had perished, and then not, and then the sun
flung up a mesh of branches, all at once
the chickadee was absorbed by sky before I could say
remember, remember me—
Julia Fiedorczuk is a writer, poet, translator, researcher, practitioner of ecocriticism, and founder of the School of Ecopoetics program. Read more.
Previously published in Oxygen (2017, Zephyr Press) and reprinted by permission of the author.