Stephen Lewandowski Poems Before CLOUDBURST 2018

BEHIND MCDONALDS

Over ten billion House sparrows served

At noon, around the cars in the back parking lot

flutters a flock of evolved sparrows.

They use a small fleet of parked grocery carts

and dumpsters as their clubhouse.

After all, why hunt when you can served?

The sparrows are industriously picking

flying bugs off the grills of the parked cars,

venturing as far under the hood as the radiator

where the bugs are not only thick but toasted.

In such an ecological niche, their exposure

to predators like rough-legged hawk hovering overhead

is minimal, and with new cars arriving

the lunch is served fast and hot.

                                    --Stephen Lewandowski

Y’KNOW

It may be that all intelligence

like all cognition

like all creation

gets fuzzy out

towards its edges

y’know like Albert Einstein

before conditioning rinses.


                      --Stephen Lewandowski

WHERE WE CAME OUT OF THE GROUND

Hopping from stone to stone

clinging to crumbling shale banks,

washed in cool air draining from the crevice,

big hemlocks skinned and polished

in their tumbling descent through gravel,

exposing whorl and gnarl.

Hepatica, trillium (still shut), bloodroot,

Dutchman’s breeches and a fern new

to me, with elongated leaves bearing

root tips seeking a hold in shale wall niche.

Bluets and arbutus, we scramble

on all fours nearly straight up,

don’t look down, on a final burst

of nervous energy.

Walking back from the top

on roads, the long way around,

through woods’ understory

white with toothwort retracing

a difficult birth struggling up

out of the womb, walking

away in sun.

                       ---Stephen Lewandowski