New Poetry by Adrienne Pilon

First Season

It's all happened before: this sunshine, this renewal.

Tumbleweeds of pollen roll across the deck, the lawn

leaving a bile-colored dust. Heedless carpenter bees

coming out for their first look at spring bump against

the windows and siding of the house, over and over,

sometimes to the death. The robins are in a frenzy 

of overwork brought on by hatchling season, zooming

in and out of the blooming rhododendron; sometimes

on their high-speed returns they smash into the 

reflected bush of the glass.I shovel up their bodies,

toss them over the fence. The foxes will eat them,

and they'll eat the bees, too along with vegetable peelings

I've used to dress the corpses. The sun shines like a curse.

Termites crawl from the windowsills as I wash off the robins' blood.

From the rhododendron comes the endless peeping of fledglings.

- © Adrienne Pilon 2022

Adrienne Pilon is a teacher, writer, and editor. She lives in North Carolina and sometimes California. Recent work appears in Eclectica, Plum Tree Tavern, Uppagus and elsewhere.