After Bob Across the Street Fires His Gun at a Tree to Scare Off a Raccoon While My Son and I Walk, Rachel Shows Me Night Heron Chicks

That ants still emerge from a jasmine bloom

is telling: not everything’s ours to take.

But it’s true we’re all knit by land, consumed

by storms and rolling heat, days opaque

with mosquitoes. This world will let us live

just as long as we’re meant to. And then it’s 

kiss rocks, bruv. The songbirds power dive

if you near their nests. The kills osprey commit

glint like coins in their talons, but money’s

no match for what this bright violence buys.

Heron chicks fuzzed awake in a pine tree,

three grown birds, ink-black crowns and yellow eyes

guarding. That’s all we can do. You, from the roof,

camera lens extended, offer this as proof.

Copyright © 2024 by Avni Vyas. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 6, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“In 2023, Florida legislation passed a permitless carry law. ‘Bob’ from the poem was within his rights to fire a gun on his property and stand his ground against a raccoon in a palm tree. Neither Bob nor the responding officer could explain what would happen if his stray bullet were to hit me or my child. I find sonnets to be fascinating containers for order when disorder reigns. While I love my home state, especially its flora and fauna, it doesn’t have to love me back. But sometimes the way relationships between unlikely species emerge offers me hope.”
—Avni Vyas