Carnage. Day 381.

Sappy green canopies and umbrellas and a roof.
Lush, sturdy pine branches with stick walls.
Little big homes made of twigs, mud, hair.
New babies tucked into siblings' warmth.

Gray Mom reappears with three acorns 
and a fluffy, speckled off-white mushroom.
Tail the size of her body,
rising high in alert.
The barred owl screams. Mom's ears perk.
She wraps up with her kits until the sun.
Safe.

Above them the crows,
Ma and four hatchlings. 
She flies away from the nest,
then comes back,
then flies away,
then comes back. Earth's worm.
Scream scream scream eat it.
More. 

They, too, tuck themselves in for the night.
Setting sun.
Under Mom's wide black feather blanket.
Away from the owls and the rain and the chill.
Until the morning sun. 

In a tall pine close but far,
owl's nest.
The downy fledgling watches Mom fly
and waits for the flimsy, soft mouse
or the floppy graying lizard.
All through the night. 

With the sun.
and the waking lids
and the morning dew
and Earth's yawn.
It comes.

Not breeze or flutter of birds,
but crashing and clanking and foreign yelling.
Yellow machines aim at the houses
made of twigs and sticks and branches and trunks.

Work boots and fat tires,
lunch boxes and canteens of coffee.
Raspy yelling and Marlboro smoke.
Chainsaws and ripped, dull blue jeans.

Sappy bleeding horizontal trees.
Settling, blinding dust.
Owl flies, crow flies.
Squirrel grabs her favorite and,
in vain
runs.

Down down down the tall pine, 
grabbing with her sharp claws
at the crispy bark
while her little dangles between her teeth.