Cutthroat trout. Advil fragments in the rosebed.

Peak radiation mutating the reproduction

of the goshawks that stalk my seed feeder.

To qualify for the experimental treatment,

you hope that your white blood cells stabilize,

that you never stop listening to the songs of birds,

cracking a joke, quoting the conservationist who,

seeking to capture with his paints the green

heron in stillness, strung wires through its wings.

If I want news of your progress, I hold my phone

above my head where the magpies flit through

the coursing waves of invisible signal.

I carry a raft of logs to the fireplace

to spend my minutes alongside their

burning, the embers glinting like amber

as they fizzle in and out of spacetime. Outside,

a deer lowers its long neck, losing its head

in the tall grass. Noting the quality

of the light through the window, I fail

to qualify it. There is nothing

left for you in nature.

A flight of shrews invades the mole hole.

Black aphids siphon the sap from the stem

of the mock orange until it curls.