Lorrie Ness

COMPASSION FATIGUE

Another ten acres scraped clear. Another 
another industrial park rising. 

I give my unpicked orchard to the displaced
deer & racoons. 

Sanctuary will be the taste of fallen apples
wormed into earth.

This fall, my own mouth hosts only breath —
the smell of teeth & lungs. Hunger

is the language of land & sky. Overhead,
chimney swifts pluck midges

from factory smog. The flock has grown thin
as the leading edge of memory.

For now, I replenish their food
by hatching mosquitos in stagnant water. 

I worry that I’ll grow tired of buying time
to spend in anticipation of grief.

That I’ll decide the fruits & insects
only prolong their starvation. 

Years ago, I put a bullet through the opossum
struck by the edge of the driveway.

The agony of bearing witness 
outweighed the chance he might have lived.

My fingers would curl again 
around a trigger. 

Industry has cleaned the sky of color.
One day I’ll take up a net 

& filter the remaining butterflies from the air. 
Their wings — somewhere between confetti & litter.

Lorrie Ness is a psychologist and poet living in Virginia. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Palette Poetry, Typishly, Thrush and others. She has been nominated for Best of the Net Awards in 2019 and 2020 by Sky Island Journal. Her chapbook “Anatomy of a Wound” is forthcoming from Flowstone Press.