by Jeff Howard

For Will

Come back to this place–

the place you are standing

as iridescent grackles by the hundreds

unfold a raucous, chittery chorus–

not crow but somehow

in the key of crow–

that makes the canopy overhead

shimmer and vibrate.

You know this place.

You know this is a place

to stand and a call to hear.

You know this place and this call

want–need–to be stood and heard.

So come back

to this place you are rooted.

Listen as the grackles’ din

becomes leaves scuttling,

rainwater gurgling,

gravel churning–

echoes of an Earth that

knows itself without apology.

Jeff Howard lives in the Columbia River valley by way of the Allegheny River valley, the Connecticut River valley, and valleys beyond. His work, which has appeared in Amethyst Review, The Ecological Citizen, Consilience, The Thinking Republic, and elsewhere, reflects a Buddhist perspective on the continuum of consciousness in an era of ecological-tailspin-amid-ecological-belonging.