Abstract Associations #004

A conversation in poetic verses

photo by Jeremy Nathan Marks

---

Dundas —

Jeremy Marks

---

---

Every time I drive the prairie
east side lamps, stoops, the shoes
of the urban fisherman asking
the birds (between breadcrumbs)
what’s good today

What’s good, is it how I can’t drive
the prairie’s noon streets without thinking
of bison hunted to below ground herds
replaced by cellophane beef cattle
preferred because they won’t stop to bathe
with plastic bottles

Or turn shopping carts into a new ark,
who wants to see that flood again
acknowledge that this is a dry ocean
because the Earth has given up
weeping.



©2025 Jeremy Nathan Marks

---

[The Reply]

---

art by John Guiseppi, The Florida Sandhill Crane

---

Sandhill Trumpet Solo —S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A

---

---

Granite teeth smile, razors piercing sky as we descend
This still silent city, haunting long shadows stretching wide
Over cold voiceless memories under watchful gaze of sun.
Cellophane cattle clamour, rattling, grotesque imitation,
Hungry, multiplying—choking fields and veined waterways
Desperate, now, to graze the unconquered curated bounty.
Fingers clutch etched names in reverence, escaping to find
Mortal respite, discarding the hollow ancient weight of
Ancestral wisdom. We release our memorial stones, among
The permanence they crave, migrational stories of life, wilder
Scriptures, weighted reminders among unnatural monuments,
Synchronizing our unison trumpet call, fragile truce consequence,
Severance from land’s true orchestra.

They curate stillness of manicured denial, vibrant chaos
That sustains, polishing stones while the living world bleeds,
Skewed ethical visions blurring with no prescription, Leopold’s
Land lost in the grasping for fleeting peace. Our voices call
Not for remembrance etched in stone, but for a reverence for
The breathing whole. Observe this hunger at the threshold, the
Vacuous semblances of life you have wrought in gates around
Your manufactured peace built on lies, a crumbling dam against the
Rising tide of your leavings. Hear our unified piercing call, a Truer truth, a lament for the severed connection, a warning echoing
Across Curated Plains: the land remembers all you cast aside.
The wind whispers through the markers, carrying seeds of
Breath-born tales.



©2025 SylviA 🌞 KalinA

---