in wildness is the preservation

looking out the window past
the glowing Yule tree
at the midnight freezing rain

a stranger cat emerges from shrubs by the door
and strolls out down path to street
across and into darkness

something half-wild in the street
disappearing

•

it pleases me to know there's
a pack of coyotes wandering through Chicago
a herd of deer in Central Park
bald eagles flying up the Mississippi River valley
in downtown Minneapolis

where once I saw a peregrine falcon stoop
and knock from the sky a pigeon
in a park at dusk, stoop and lift
return with dinner to skyscraper nest

•

we're so very arrogant
we believe we're the world's nail and axis
yet it goes on around us, indifferent

and wild things roam through city cores
unnoticed, untended, unremarked
still wild, reminding us we're not alone