Temporary Homelands
One month left
for Earth’s other moon
a six-foot wide asteroid
to orbit Earth
a temporary captured object
its path eccentric
and destined to take flight
and wander
never to return
unlike the migrant birds
tugged by roots
to a birthplace
a speck of magnetite
or neural-networked
sextants in their brains
the first arrival
three weeks ago
a Red-winged blackbird
believing the ice-bound creek
behind the mobile home park
will melt
and the maroonish willows
patient with the low sun
will green
Michael G. Smith, Bozeman, MT, is a chemist. His poetry has been published in many literary journals. His books include No Small Things and Flip Flop, a collection of haiku co-written with Miriam Sagan. His poem Disturbance Theory. Glacier was selected to be photographed and displayed in Antarctica in early 2021 by the Antarctic Poetry Exhibition https://www.antarcticpoetry.com/. He does volunteer work at the local food bank, and at a school and orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal.
See more of his work in 9.2 and 9.2 and 9.2