You think I don’t love you,
that I think of you as
just the feeder?
What about when I curl up
right between your legs at night,
locking you into warmth?
When I sniff the socks you’ve
just removed to inhale
the essence of you that walks
through the world every day?
When I leave you an offering
in sand, a bit of ephemeral art
shaped just so, which I know
you will scoop into a bag
and throw away?
That’s affection, my fine
feeder friend, a bit of
feline adoration sculpted
just for you.
(in memory of Heide Juchnik)
That we are hardwired to love
and lose is what comes again and again—
the euphoria of spring springing
into sudden, bright leaves where
there were none days ago,
green harbingers that will age
through summer, grow brittle
by fall.
It is the way of things:
That decline into the time when
passage to the next place is possible,
mourning what was, learning
to let go.
That love emerges in the form
of unexpected beings who appear,
lend a hand, a heart, a word,
companion spirits, seen and unseen,
who arrive with armfuls of compassion,
kindness falling like soft rain
after a long dry spell, moistening
hard ground, coaxing out of hiding
green stalks topped with dancers
in fluted yellow skirts to courtesy
in the breeze.
There is no such a thing as end.
Now you’re just teasing us with these
popcorn clouds scudding by one moment
and thick gray clodhoppers overhead
the next. You dangle spring before us
like a carrot before the horse, like
catnip treats I offer the cat before
sneaking in to pill him. He is not
pleased at my subterfuge, as we
are not with this on-again, off-again
glimpses of the abundance to come.
Or is this a challenge: to see the beauty
in the gray, in the chill, not wait to
revel in bright warmth and gumball
color popping at us? To recognize
that the season has commenced,
even if it doesn’t look like it?
Then let me walk into this day
and peer at the pewter ceiling that,
for the moment, is not shedding
moisture on us, and smile at
the altostratus clouds cloaking
the sky, obscuring the sun, which,
we remind ourselves, always shines,
even when we can’t see its luminous,
smiling face.
Three young men showed up
not long after 8 a.m. ready to
carefully trim the old sycamore,
its caretaker a bit trepidatious
about what Braden, the climber,
might decide to remove.
It’s a heritage tree, the estimator
said, which means that they take
extreme care with the old girl—
no chainsawing, just long-handled
pole cutting here and there,
there and here, on a day of chilly
mizzle. Braden, the sculptor, dangling
from the rope high in the sycamore
like an orangutan hanging by a long
arm, taking his time, surveying,
removing what isn’t needed—
wielding the chisel not unlike
Michelangelo, young at his craft
but evidencing a good eye,
moving through the century-old
limbs like the pro he is, at a vantage
point I envy, one I’ll never see—
while groundsmen Austin and Max
apply chainsaw and rake to a couple
of volunteers, one of which has died,
beneath the great tree.
They are artists and barbers,
surgeons and coroners, as well as
those who tidy up after the messy
business of disposing of death,
of tending the living who,
after the team’s good work, will,
the tree gods willing, continue to rise
tall and strong.
for Deborah Meltvedt on World Poetry Day
The river looks like a muddy lake,
milk chocolate spread from bank to bank,
the swollen American not at flood stage,
but definitely a crest that will recede
in the coming days. We walk the west
side levee now that the bulldozers and
earthmovers have moved on farther
upstream for more repair, mourning
the taking of so many trees and habitat
of river dwellers we no longer hear or see.
We understand about necessary reinforcement,
flood protection in times like these when
so much water careens down this narrow
course. But we wonder where the otters
and beavers have gone, where water fowl
have relocated. We walk close to the river’s
edge near a small copse of trees up to
their knees in the deceptively still stream.
A mallard pair swims between spindly
trunks like drunken bees weaving from flower
to flower. You’ve seen these two here before,
say that you like to think of them as a mated
pair—imagine them floating together on
hot days on this thin ribbon of river just as
they now cruise the high water. They paddle
into a sunspot, pause, look our way, then
synchronize a turn downstream, heading
someplace we cannot begin to follow.
toward spring even as
winter still whooshes through us,
shakes us like a wet dog
pelting us with spiky drops.
Turning
the heart toward mystery,
toward the divine,
as we walk into what
we cannot see,
as we turn
rounding this sharp corner,
then that one,
the winding path unclear
but, we trust, leading
to some bright thing,
a centering where we
might find wonder,
we might hold awe
in our trembling hands.
We turn into transformation
even as we cannot see it,
a pilgrimage we make
daily, step by step,
a circuit through
the inner journeys
of our souls.
But how pretty, like a peony
blasted open with a starry center,
WR124 surrounded by watercolor
gases that signify its approaching
end, before it undergoes a turbulent
transformation, before it supernovas
into glowing cosmic dust. It’s shedding
its outer layers now, a molting star,
petals loosening at the edges as we
do when the end is near, letting go
of what’s not needed—in this case,
10 suns’ worth of universal material.
It’s hard to look away from the bright
core, even though we know its days
are numbered, even though we
remember it as a brilliant fireball of
orange, red, yellow dazzling energy. It’s
a mystery, what happens at the end,
especially if we’re not there to see it.
But all that starstuff it flings into the
universe makes us us—we who are
forged in iron and calcium from
ancestors that exploded billions of
years ago, as this one will one day,
spreading shimmer and dazzle through
the cosmos, baby planets born in star
nurseries, creating all that is, bringing
me to you and you to me in this
twinkling moment we share,
exquisite, yes, radiant,
and oh, so finite.
for Cliff
Look at them:
all that rainbow-y nylon dripping
like bridal veils—one whose face
wears a happy rainbow over
white clouds and half a circle of sun,
the other with a prancing unicorn
under the little purple and green
tissue paper diamond, dented
and torn, two big spools of thread
and one little one.
Our kites still live in the big striped
cloth bag you sewed for them
almost four decades ago—
kites we flew over coastal beaches,
sea spray dotting our cheeks,
watching the broad faces
of their light bodies get smaller
and smaller as the spools unfurled
into the sky.
We flew them from the bluffs of Mendocino
and on the sand below the Cliff House
in San Francisco, where, years later,
I buried some of what was left of you
after you soared and tangled and dove
to an early end.
I don’t remember when I put them away,
how long it’s been since they tasted wind,
even at the end of a thin leash.
But I imagine they can still fly.
I bet they can propel themselves
upupup, a shimmering palette against
a March sky—their red and orange,
blue and green and purple tails
whipping the spring wind,
dancing up there,
aloft for as long
as we liked.
For Clifford Ernest Polland
May 21, 1952–March 18, 2001
On this day of green, of imminent spring,
of green beer and drunken celebration,
I think of you on that terribly ordinary day,
setting off to eat corned beef and cabbage
with your siblings,
me planning to see you the next day,
none of us having any idea what was soon
to happen.
As it should be.
We should all live fully to the end,
death sneaking up on us like a little one we love
tapping us on the shoulder, smiling,
gently saying, Come with me.
And we do.
We should drink that last green beer
not knowing.
We should hug those we love
and say goodbye as though we mean it.
We should not mind so small a flower.
—Emily Dickinson
The lengthening days of Lent
with its increasing light
coaxing the swelling buds,
the unfurling ferns, greening,
the blooming of everything
in this season of awakening,
in every sense of becoming.
The opening of irises,
of eyes, as well as
broadening hearts
pointing toward love,
toward the mysteries
that warm us—
let us revel in the flourishing
of the earth, what has sprouted
there and there, poking their
wee heads up through dirt,
bursting forth on branches,
on supple stems that remind us
of the hope springing,
the lengthening of
everpresent grace.
