Featured Poem

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Fever

 

Young martins on the wire

out from their nest-fever

waiting to be fed in black 

and white outfits in late summer

their parents raising one last brood 

before the flight south.

 

They’re over the bay like bats at dusk

flickering after-images of themselves

then at dawn they’re angels 

of sky’s depth or soutaned 

priests touching down 

to bless their flock.

 

That fleeting communion

of bodily hunger 

the thirst of the spirit sated 

in sky burnished by wings

the globe’s magnetic poles pulling 

them over continents.

 

Each iteration of home 

dawns as longing   

the sky radioactive 

the air pulsing with heat 

with distance upon distance

future upon future. 

 

Mountains heat thermals 

to guide them so they’ll return 

whenever spring’s in spate  

a few survivors winging 

through the smoke of ruined cities

the dust to dust of human hate.

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Published in The North, 71, August 2025