Anomalies

Daybreak—the sun a bloody eye wrapped in a blanket of haze from a dozen fires. Air steals breath, hot wind sucks dirt dry, crackles meadow grass, cooks blackcaps on the bush. The cat pants. Snakes slither in the frog pond, goldfish belly up; finches teeter on lily pads then drown. Robins peck at shriveled grapes. Earwigs feast on flowers drooping in midnight heat. The earth thirsts.

Pines weep needles, not cones, and the oaks are barren, a famine for squirrels, turkey and deer. Winds rip off roof sections, tear limbs from trees. Three magpies, blown off course, head east. Seven western grays dig for rotten apples in early snow, scavenge maple seeds in a freak blizzard. Coyote and bobcat prowl the barnyard, stalking our last chicken. An owl roosts above the compost.

Snow rollers dot the hillside, yule logs made of powdered sugar and lace. Eighteen elk dig through snowdrifts, nibble canola, rub trunks raw on sequoia and fir. Trees bend and snap under a thick coating of ice, litter the trails like pick up sticks, cleaving the prune and crushing the lilacs. Squirrels hunt for truffles, peel the bark from pines, eat the tender skin. The sun is a pearl, peeking through fog silvering trees with rime.

The bees are sleeping, imprisoned by a late spring snowstorm that freezes peach buds and lingers a week. After the sun returns and the pears and cherries bloom, the bees still sleep. When dandelions and violets and clover sprinkle the lawn like confetti and plum blossoms scent the air, still they sleep. In May they awaken, just in time to pollinate the apples, then disappear. Only one squirrel returns,  replaced by hungry rabbits. Hummingbird feeders remain untouched.  

In the woods, a lone swallowtail, folded wings the color of bees, rests on a honeysuckle.

                                     _______________________________

Shirlee Jellum is a retired English teacher who publishes fiction, nonfiction and poetry. When not writing she enjoys backpacking, traveling and gardening.  Everything in this poem is an observation of what has been changing on my farm in the last four decades due to climate change: freakish snow and windstorms, the unexpected appearance of elk and rabbits, the dramatic decline of the endangered western gray squirrels from starvation, massive tree loss, the absence of bees.