DEAD AIR FOR THE WARBLER

by Les Bares

The girded red and white radio tower
stands 310 contrary feet, silent and uncertain,
surrounded by an accusing field of burnt grass.

At its tip, where the hyperactive wind wails news
noise, a constant stream of waves beyond hearing
battles against the capital sin of radio—dead air.

He walks through the char at the base of the tower,
ashes blackening his boots. He checks the platform,
the steel of the mast, the deadmen, the cables.

He finds a warbler carcass in the grass—towerkill.
It must have collided with a guy wire in the dark.
A broken wing, a slow death.

A hopeless circled hopping in the torched chaff
until it could not. Until black flies came along.
Cleanup duty, an easy meal.

When the rains come, rhizomes will sprout in
the scorched meadow. Will twine a green tomb
around warbler bones and yellow feathers.

Les Bares is a retired high school teacher who now lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife the poet and essayist, Roselyn Elliott. He was the winner of the 2023 Meridian Journal Short Prose Prize and the 2018 Princemere Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in The Madison Review, Spillway, Cream City Review, the Irish Journal Southword, the English Magazine Stand, and other journals.