John Popielaski
How Fragile Is the Peace
If somehow I have managed
to focus my philanthropy
on creatures that get stepped on,
shot at, struck by someone
speeding to the package store
before it closes with a sign flip
for the night, which draws
the deer down to the yard’s edge
where I pile cracked corn
like a traitor to a cause
my kind has championed
as necessary for the good,
I do not mean to seem unneighborly.
I wave before I’m waved to,
and I only use the chainsaw
to make cordwood after leaves flare
in what light is left these afternoons,
although there is an ordinance
that says we’re not allowed
to leave out food for animals
we do not formally tend,
and this I have ignored
with an insurgent regularity,
which bothers Henry, I suspect,
although he has not hailed me over
to the shrub- and pine-lined boundary
where such matters in the past
have had their airing
in the small talk that we speak,
like diplomats, in code, aware
how fragile is the peace.
Other work by John Popielaski