two poems

Pam Uschuk

MESSAGE DURING A COLD SNAP

for Teresa Acevedo

Brighter than a new wedding ring, the morning star’s

shine aligns with Jupiter, Saturn and Mars

to lead javelinas and coyotes through

narrow neighborhood streets

while wild mountain sheep clatter down Pusch Ridge

through purple owl clover, toad flax, scorpion weed.

I count two stone green cactus buds

that with luck will bloom this week.

Mule deer wake, shake late frost from hollow hair,

amazed perhaps wildflowers survive night’s bitter dreams.

 Do they wonder who they’ll meet

walking early for birds, counting

common house finches, a rare fan tail warbler

with black-throated sparrows flying in for

seed?

Dawn stirs as restless

as the ghost echo of a Great Horned

owl in the eucalyptus overhanging our

roof.

Kangaroo mice and pack rats curl

around their breath while lizards and

scorpions hibernate under mica, gneiss and

schist.

Less than a hundred miles south

angry steel plates cleave cactus,

jaguar’s

mating path, dwarfing humanity’s imagination

where refugees huddle berated by red gimme hats—

just another election promise

with nowhere left to run.

Christmas is coming.

They pull thin jackets tight around shoulders,

wipe mucous from child noses, bend close

over infants who’ve joined our swollen

nation of the hated and despised.

Do these refugees remind you, too, of migrant winter birds

tourists drive thousands of miles to see, writing down

in moleskine waterproof notebooks wing shape,

breast color as they click on an app to identify

each nuance of song they meant

to actually hear?

MOVING THE PLUMERIA

Before the freeze, I prepare soil, repair

irrigation lines bitten through by doe-eyed gophers

or my Australian cattle dog pup.

Ylang ylang has lost nearly all her umbrella leaves

after months sequestered in the kitchen, center

of conversation, random bickering and food.

She never lacked for company,

sheltered from frost,

the silent cold shoulders of snow.

Before the pandemic, I bought her along

with her sister flame cactus, her blooms

open-mouthed kisses brash and red.

Delicate, plumeria’s blossoms drenched

the garden in Hawaiian musk.

She thrived in her new hood next to star jasmine,

the arthritic arms of rosemary, gardenias—

theirs a symphony of sexual pefume

broadbilled hummers mined

along with fuschia bougainveilea

and climbing orange trumpet vines.

Nothing dissuaded her, not molten desert temps

over 110 degrees weeks on end, coyote screams

at the far away stars, mockingbirds

changing their tunes in oleanders wilting

and tall as the house, the pandemic

murdering millions of human lives. Lelani grew.

From just above my knee, she sprouted

to my stomach, my shoulders, then over

my head eight feet basketball star height

while we bent from death all around us.

Now she tells fortunes, predicting

unseasonal shifts in clouds, the sag

in the jet stream, early migrations

of warblers and shoveler ducks, the lies

of politicians who claim

Climate Change is just fake news.

Enbraced by lantana, Mexican bird of paradise,

she coexists roots entangled, sharing nutrients

in the garden’s dark compost

while muscle cars gun below her, race for their lives.