This Ghost Extraction

Scant sentences in honour of March

What wishing propels the rare days. Small spans growing larger, the flora, the fauna—which is it—sprouting thick in the mind, in the distance.

The end of the war brought people into the streets and felled them. All the stones that bear the same death year. A winter as hard as every other. They want, it wants—which is it—to thrive. We don’t aspire to quite the same.

Buffleheads and goldeneyes grouped in memory, slant sun. Chickadees, cardinals brushing through snow and cedar. Juncos. Crows far off. Shock of robin’s breast. Silhouette of bird in wind that’s not quite a grackle, not quite a starling. A bird that’s neither starling nor sparrow. Clicking language of starling flock into grackle trill into crow manoeuvring. Starling urging into hard ground. Starling growling like a puppy.

Hornet-swarm of highway, the southern border, constant, no breaks. The hyacinths perfuming the room a luxury I’d never talk about.

The streets of the neighbourhood glitter with windshield. Two sparrows crowd close on their dumpster lip. A box wheels down the sidewalk, containing its delivery. It stops at the light. One modern wheel spins one human down one sidewalk. One armload of bedding dragged through a neighbourhood.

The capacity to forget, lay aside, suspend. But not abandon. To have the mode you remember return. The deer on the shoulder holds memory of dew. The drone assumes a hopeful tenor.