when grey owls
fill Minnesota
and snowies take winter refuge
below a New Jersey waterfall
as pine siskins crowd certain nearby feeders
it is termed “an irruption”:
— “sudden increase in animal population”
like June’s fireflies
Morse-coding through these inky woods
float-casting
igniting
sometimes so near I watch
them change from white
through yellow to green
light never given
you, whose irruption
countered January’s chill
When Carolyn Foote Edelmann is not saving New Jersey Land at D&R Greenway, she is out on the trails, in a kayak, and/or writing poems.
