In the Peaceable Kingdom

Refill the black oil sunflower seeds
for cardinals, titmice, wrens. Replace

the suet cake for downy woodpeckers,
flickers, grackles that will eat it down

to the wire cage in less than a day.
Throw apple cores and kale stems

off the porch, onto the crust of snow.
Coyotes yip the moon across the sky.

Come morning, lines of split-hooved tracks
spell out how deer tore up the earth for more.

When bread grows leprous leopard spots,
tear it, scatter chunks below the tube

of glittery nyjer seed. See, then, pawprints,
soft as blotted lipstick, marking the snow—

it’s hunting birds, I’ve set a trap—
but no, the skinny cat has snatched a hunk

of moldy bread and locks his yellow eyes
on mine before he streaks away. The world

is starving, everything that lives is a mouth,
and I cannot afford to be their god.