someone pulled a curtain
over the wide dome of trees
and the wind rushed in
making the forest groan
in retrospect, I should have noticed
the silence, as the air stilled
like an indrawn breath, expectant
until the world exhaled
a cache of debris, dropping
to the ground as if
the sky was discarding itself
rattling apart, piece by piece
but still, no rain
until the purpling clouds belched
a wild rumble, splitting open
and the water poured down
drenching my face
the scream of a crow
is what finally moved me
the path, a tunnel, as I ran
from wind and shadow and fear
towards the electric sky, aglow
with an arc of lightning
that reached for the river
with fingers of white fire
Category: Grief
these heavy days
the time after twilight is the hardest
a long, empty space, impossible to fill
the only antidote, distraction
yet the silence finds me anyway
I’m still so broken, so concious
of my own grief/sorrow/despair
the days hold too many hours
each one a treasure of lost moments
of evenings that overflowed, bountiful
with bedtimes and grateful goodnights
a lost eternity
I ache from the empty space, once filled
sinking into bed–grateful, relieved
not to carry the heavy silence
of the given day, the gifted day
Foolish, blind, looking
towards morning
with a kind of tired hope
that tomorrow will be easier
the weight lighter
the hours, not as endless
as my distance from you
Stratum
the oldest versions are stacked
like layers of dermis, hardened
over years that became decades
until middle age found me
counting the silver strands that shine
like falling stars across the lusterless surface
of my fossilized youth
my first two decades lie frozen
within the merciless amber of time
thin as parchment
delicate as spun sugar, disintegrating
beneath the droplets of years
by my third decade I basked
in the comfort of motherhood
babies in tow, each season a gift
alight with the glimmer
of a connected whole
for the first time, I was more than myself
no longer young, but still young enough
to feel life’s shine
Envy
I’m jealous of the wintering sparrows
that huddle, shivering
within the shelter of my arborvitae
it’s a marvel to behold creatures
who keep such close company
with death
what must it be like to live
until the very moment you die
to simply fall out of the sky
an ember extinguished
a bright note, quelled
by a roving predator
or the insolence
of reflective glass?
birds don’t waste a thought
on the inevitability of endings
because they have the sky
and the sky has them
There is no lingering
when you live by the wing
no long, protracted dying
imagine what it’s like
when you’re not afraid to fall
Heartwood
of course the trees have names
and stories, a history that’s tragic
and spectacular
I’ve just discovered them
after all these years
of placing my feet
on pine floors
in spruce houses
curled up inside
the bodies of trees
never wondering
about their beginnings
or the fabric of forests
how the trees talk
how they must want to live
as much as every vibrant thread
that pulses with chemical synthesis
the center of a tree is dead
it’s the heartwood
that surrounds us
My Perch in the Sky
If the sky were solid
I’d carve a path into the waxy blue
a tiered length of white-capped
windblown azure stairs
to take me to the place
the crows call home
I’d forge my way across
the thin blue line
an explorer in a vast frontier
and I’d forget my life
discarding it
like a spent benefactor
shedding the heavy coil
of my old self
Until, of course, I happened to look down
at the leaf-strewn Earth
and remember my sorrow
I’d notice that the faded grass
is waking up beneath a season
of depleted seed, drifting
across my abandoned lawn
like seafoam
I’d witness how the wind
cradles the Earth
lifting the long-dead leaves
from the thawing ground
reanimating them,
and prying me
from my perch path in the sky
Impatient Spring
In early March as aging Winter
denies the inevitable thaw
it feels soft and hopeful one day
hard and relentless the next
and I find myself counting back
the preceding months of slate skies
and skeletal trees, the dirty snow
so far gone it’s hard to recall
how bright it was in December
when string lights and holiday hearths
made the icy windows feel festive
but that was an eternity ago
before winter hunkered down
settling its heavy bones into the Earth
content to stay awhile, and now?
March won’t yield fast enough
I’m afraid that this will be the year
spring doesn’t come
Winter’s Last Days
I shouldn’t hate March, but I do.
This trickster of months promises spring,
then takes it away
dumping another eighteen inches
of thick, sticky snow
like clumps of brown sugar onto overburdened branches
I shouldn’t hate March,
except two days after winter, at last, retreated
while spring, newly born, hung back,
she died.
The weak winter sun was her last
The sky, a slab of concrete,
the trees, skeletal, ashen
the world colorless
March’s dull eyes had not yet found their shine
The frost, lingering, painted everything
white as death
I do hate March, I do
For wrestling the season away from winter
For pulling the sun close,
so it could thaw the frozen ground,
but not until after she sighed her last breath,
not until then!
She died, cheated of the first Magnolia blooms
Cheated, when March painted the dormant grass green
and coaxed the apple trees
into an explosion of buds.
Each crocus, each daffodil, the color that blossomed to life
even as she faded from it—were a mockery.
March has branded everything she lost
into my soul.
Its long days of deprivation are situated
too close to abundance.
I do hate March, I do
Visible Grief
It might float behind me
a dark cloud, billowing and weightless
but somehow heavy, a storm within
below, above, around me
obscuring bright reality
Or maybe it does have weight
a thick, oozing sludge
swallowing me from toes to throat
consuming me, a dark heavy morass
sticking to every part of me
No wonder I'm exhausted
choked off from the current
of ordinary life, observing
the daily thrum and cadence
of everyone around me
except those others
whose own grief clings
to burdened heels
Homebodies
after you were both born
through the front door, this house
settled itself around us, cradled
your childhood in arms of plaster and lathe
came alive with the thrum and pulse
of four hearts beating, a family
a family
a family
a family
each one of us crucial
to the structural integrity
of the whole
but walls can’t keep
the cancer out
after her body was borne
through the front door, this house
groaned beneath the weight
of our collective sorrow
each room shuddered, fibrillating
its wooden bones aching
the memory of us, haunting
the cobweb corners
like a mind tormented