47th US President Poem: January 6th, 2025, by Jennie Meyer

The marsh finally slumps under
a thin cover of ice, dropping broken
wedges down its muddy sides
as the tide draws back in on itself.

Warm on the couch by the stove
I look out at the birds edgily feeding
in the cold. The silo is low. I know.
They know. My wish to write a poem

before filling it is their mid-winter panic.
As they dash back and forth from hinged
platform to tree limb, I sip coffee, mull over
the juvenile hawk of late summer, how he whined

and wailed from the treetops in the heat—
big feathered baby complaining about
the disgrace of this state, no one to rip flesh
and drop it into his gaping, yellow beak.

So irate he torpedoes, slams his feet against
the bell shield of the birdfeeder, as if he
believes his tantrum will deliver fresh meat
to him. As if he could just bully their system

into submission, so chickadees, titmice,
and two species of woodpeckers and finches
would simply drop for him, drop their lives,
their business of survival, in devotion

even to their own demise, for him.
Once, twice, (three times?) he dives, crashes
down, bell and feeder clank under his talons,
swing wildly off center in reaction. Each time,

he pumps back up to the top branch of the stately
white pine, rants, whines how unfair, how rigged
and depraved this land is. On this winter day,
my words and the birds’ feeder spent—

their fast-beating hearts will freeze if I don’t rise,
fill the silo, seed some warmth, tender
some lift to their weary wings.