Death of a Despot

 Death of a Despot

It’s March 30, 2026 and I’m sitting on my back porch, despite temperatures in the low forties, contemplating a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and an intensely blue blur of Anemone blanda blooming in a nearby garden bed. Our hummingbird feeder, hanging only a few feet away, hums intermittently with visits from the Anna’s Hummingbird, or is it a Rufous? But, something is missing; something is askew. The birds fly in and feed sporadically, displaying a certain sense of nervousness, looking over both shoulders as they feed. Gradually it dawned on me as to what was missing - it’s the villain, the scoundrel, the domineering despot who has ruled my artificial feeders with his (discerning) eye and sharp titanium beak for at least two years. The birds are still nervous while feeding but none have been attacked by any other hummingbirds - so far. Is that dominant alpha male of the last two or three years, the one that terrorized the feeders, dead? Is it perhaps too early to join the Munchkins and join them singing about the passing of the wicked hummingwarlockbird? “Ding-Dong the warlock’s dead, wake up, wake up you sleepy heads. Or, will a new emperor, king, president, dictator, etc. rise from the feathered ashes, with or without a ruby throat? 

Geoffrey Rises

 

 Geoffrey Rises (a revision of #3)

Geoffrey rises

in the spectral dawn

from his bed of tamarack boughs,

and, like an unbidden ghost, or guest,

walks with reverence

to the eddying cold waters of

Pinnacle Creek.

The shallow edge of the stream

is frozen into a latticework of crystals,

iridescent,

even in the grayness of dawn,

bright as a crystalline patina

of pale-purple fluorite -

    the thickness of Buddha’s eyelid.

The water falls, always,

and forever,

from the top of the ragged,

glaciated mountain,

to an unknown Tethy’s sea.

His fingers grow numb.

He has dreamt too long.

He feels his flesh

draw tighter to the bone,

his mind contract.

As he brews a cup of tea

he listens to the song of dawn birds

as they conjure sunlight into being.

He hopes they will succeed.