Pandemic Litany for Late Spring

Another morning slips through the window like a need,
like a need for dogs, for nicotine, like a need for caffeine

and Dolly Parton songs. I want the birds to riot all the time.
The need for the screech of bluejays, the chirps of titmice.

The blur of blood red when cardinals fight for their seats
on my fence. Outside the window the neighbor’s roses droop

with aphids, the rabbits grind the garden lettuce and starlings
steal the tomatoes. The groundhog tunnels the backyard

into a maze game. The hawk surveys and shrieks
from the sycamore. This need we have to tame it all,

to own it: backyards, gardens, our neighbors. This need
to sing Dolly’s pretty tunes until we are cuffed mid-verse

by the fist fight of her lyrics: betrayal, sorrow,
astonishment: a woman walks out on her husband

and kids. This pig-headedness of the mockingbirds
who bully the bluebirds out of the puddles, chase

the crow with something gold pinched in his beak.
This need to break the glass, flee the malady, the malaise.  

Watching from the window I long to live with the murder
of crows who patrol the skies. I pray for murmuration.

Marianne Worthington is co-founder and poetry editor of Still: The Journal, an online literary magazine publishing literary, visual, and musical artists with ties to Appalachia since 2009. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, CALYX, Cheap Pop, and FEED, among other places. She received the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council and artist’s grants from Kentucky Foundation for Women. She co-edited Piano in a Sycamore: Writing Lessons from the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop and is author of a poetry chapbook. Her poetry collection, The Girl Singer, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky in late 2021. She grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee and lives, writes, and teaches in southeast Kentucky. She’s on Twitter @m__worthington.