Here’s to fortune and health
for all the downy woodpeckers
I’ve ever seen on my feeder

It’s almost Christmas and I feel nothing
but fear for myself as I wish good cheer
to every last feathered one of them

Before they disappear forever
into the next mass extinction
may they feast and be merry

all the way to the end (and
may the squirrels I accidentally support as well
have a twinkle in their eyes as they pass)

It doesn’t much feel like Christmas to me
but when I see the animals I’m reminded
that part of the world

thinks they’ll be talking to each other
at midnight on Christmas Day
and they’ll be saying calming things

about some baby or another born to save us
If we make it to the Second Coming
I’m sure there won’t be many animals 

left to talk about it
So for now I’ll encourage them to eat
and smile at their heads bobbing in and out

because as the song says
it don’t feel much like Christmas time
To me it’s more like Good Friday

and grief’s darkness and I’m thinking
we won’t make it to Easter 
and the stone will sit there unmoved

with a raven and a dove perched on top
for a few seconds before they topple
into the dust 

Of all the myths we’ve lived by
the one I have the least faith in
is the one that taught us to think death

while awful was impermanent
so complacency in the face of extinction
was a rational state of mind

The downy woodpeckers fly in
and eat when they can and when they go
they’re gone

and it doesn’t feel like Christmas
or hope or belief or even joy 
will stick around for long

once they’re gone for good

You long for the frontier
of old, long for 
the joy of getting a medal
for your massacre skills.

These days,
you have to be
discreet.

Get a secret tool
you can use 
with black iron edge or
silver that sings.

Learn to swing it,
where and how
to stop it.

Start your practice
at home, move it to
the car, at last strap
yourself and walk among
your targets
like an old school
hunter, settler, pioneer,
colonizer deluxe;

bloodline cleanser
one hundred and fifty years
too late to go public — 
too bad 
they don’t pay for scalps anymore:

you could have made a killing.

as has been predicted
we are down on all fours
eating sand — smooth

pink, hard graveled, 
laden with plastic and glass,
oil-caked: whatever we find

we swallow because we must
eat or die. we are down on all fours
drinking sewage or other foulness

because all we have left is foulness.
drown in scent and hard swallow.
this is how we see ourselves now.

as has been predicted on all fours,
understanding slightly more
of what that’s like. there were so many

who told us it would come to this
and now we semi-get it but we still think
we will rise up in a bit and things

will return to normal. we only semi-get it
as was predicted. this is normal now.
we will have to be down a long time,

longer than this, if we are ever to rise.
those who’ve lived here on all fours longer
stretch and prepare. as was predicted.

as their time down is done. if there will be
a rising at all they are ready. we remain
on all fours though they will lift us.

if we let them.
if we can vomit that poison.
if we take note of what has been predicted.