Remnants still visible by Marge Piercy Robins migrate, all schoolchildren learn but here on the Cape, every winter a flock forms and stays, long frigid months after their compatriots have flown south. They live deep in the woods on hips and berries wizened by cold. Sometimes they appear here among the feeder birds, one or two almost outcasts. Off Alaska when humpback whales leave in fall as the waters freeze and the world turns white, heading for mating grounds off Hawaii and Mexico, certain whales remain. What makes a creature stay when almost all of its kind have moved on? In burned-out areas of Detroit, you’ll notice one house still wears curtains, a bike locked to the porch. Sometimes in the suburbs among tract houses with carpets of grass one farmhouse lurks, maybe even with a barn. I imagine its owner grey and stubborn, still growing the best tomatoes for miles, refusing to plant inedible gr...
