White Chalet Bird House—Lauren Camp

"Where do you house your worry?"

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White Chalet Bird House

by Lauren Camp

Where do you house your worry? At 4 am, I’m awake 
to the surly news kicked up in the dark. I’m alert to the wind 
that keeps situating. The season
I’ve grown to detest now goes wiry all year and every 
hour I am reduced to its lacing. 
A falcon stands guard, toothing the air 
from its perch on a dead tree to the east. 
I have so much work to do
on the irrational brutal future 
of the world in these murky hours, work that never
is needed. Or finished. Instead, I begin 
studying theorems, blink through the language
of lemmas and identities, and bother 
the buttons that break me from such 
propositions. Maybe math is not 
where I need to be. I used to be grateful 
for proof, but now want something less narrow 
to settle in. Do you worry? I’ve been going 
to friends’ houses and looking devoted
for radiance, sitting at their tables, in their barns, running 
my knees against their rivers and petting 
their turkeys, checking where they are safe, 
what is lucky, and what might be broken 
to sorrow. On the Web, I find a site 
with multipart birdhouses. Rooms to move into. 
Can I say housing keeps me up? 
I read of the stabbing in Portland as people were traveling
home. Then, the busful of Coptic Christians in Egypt 
en route to the lodging of their hearts. I cannot sleep 
through any more slaying. The birdhouses are all white 
with shingled pine roof and windows 
and other little advantages: a porthole, a door. 
A house is for safety, for nesting, for the songs of comfort.
I read and read through the stars and the balcony
of light outside turns beautiful and the wind 
is now easy as a spoon, and not writhing and the nerd clock 
on the wall plans its way forward with equations
I’ll never understand, with time 
that will always be indefinite, that might even,
when I’m not looking, escape.

---

Published in Worn Smooth between Devourings (NYQ Books, 2023)

Lauren Camp serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently In Old Sky (Grand Canyon Conservancy, 2024). A former Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park, Camp is a recipient of the Dorset Prize, finalist commendations for the Arab American Book Award and Adrienne Rich Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and Black Earth Institute. Her poems have been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, French, and Arabic.  www.laurencamp.com­