Squirrel World by Tamara Madison

One could do worse
Than to be a squirrel in this park
Where each tree is a sovereign country
And the ground between tree continents
A freeway of grass and dirt.
Each of these trees
A navigable land of plenty;
A squirrel can leap from the top of one
To a thin twig at the tip of another
With no fear of falling. Sure,
There are hawks to contend with,
And owls. But we
Have cancer, Covid-19,
A myriad of ills, and each other.
Worst of all, each other.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbook The Belly Remembers, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig and many other publications. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.