The always interesting thing about reading poetry is where your mind takes you after reading the final word. If I based a poem on that poem I find that frequently my poem won’t bear much of a resemblance to the original poem.

For today’s poem, the inspiration came from Mary Oliver’s Death at a Great Distance. I thought of the mushroom and the snake, the latter causes so much fear that people go out of their way to kill them. And, of course, these days, we just keep building the green spaces essentially taking away natural habitats.

Evicted

 Saws sounding like angry hornets
break the wren’s serenade.
 Bit by bit oaks, maples, dogwoods
fall, a thud, a chunk of earth
 dislodged. More machines materialize
thundering over the patch,
churning dirt, until green gives way.
 The thatch of woods, a memory now
 where once the fox kits chased tails
 before sunrise.