Annelida

rain slips down the ragged curtain of clouds,
patter-slaps on thick madrone leaves
and sprays out onto arid earth,
disappearing between pebbles of gray schist,
tan grains of sand, and brown loam,
Down the hair fine white roots of grass
Where maroon and brown annelida pucker and flex,

blind

and shift the soil aside,
not intending to drown
in this their kingdom
probe and slip against the muck,
up to the surface
to lie in thickets of switch blade grass,
and wonder…

What? What?

Like, Wild Flower, Man

Six A.M.

And gray dawn slipping through
The oaks and maples,
Leafless, reaching toward bleak winter sky,
As they stand poised for spring’s gentle justice.

A dusting of snow
Has settled on the branches.

Crows, one, then another, south to north
Across this frozen tableau,
Raucous voices cutting
Through the snow muffled day.

I will rise, coffee in hand ,
To greet the day
And maybe, bare foot and brash,
Step onto the chilled snowy deck
To say farewell to winter.

May 21, 2005 10:00 p.m.

Her green eyes luminous in the lamplight
And red hair spilling over her shoulders
And into my face…

Will you?

Yes. Yes, I will.

And my heart soaring,
Tears at the canthus
And a breath catching somewhere
Somewhere, where I cannot breathe

Inside

All the while smiling
Clinging to the length of her.

And again later, on my knees
Again

Yes
Yes I will be your wife

And you will be my husband.

A Conversation

That’s the way of the world
I don’t know what she meant
Cat got your tongue
Horse of another color
Talking in clichés

Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel
Is too good to be true
In hot water?
Or hell bent for leather?
She was the apple of my eye
But I looked a gift horse in the mouth.

But even with a hope and a prayer
I let a golden opportunity slip away
Till I realized that the whole enchilada
That did not kill me, made me stronger.
She needed me like a fish needed a bicycle.

She let her hair down
And gave me the third degree
Thought I was sound as a dollar
And I was least but not last
And one tomato short
Of good spaghetti sauce.

I could have flown in the face of
The apple of discord
Then I would have been busier than
A one legged man in a…well you know.
Instead I was left standing like a cow staring at a new gate.

let bygones be bygones
gone with the wind
a foregone conclusion
dead and gone
dog gone it
here today - gone tomorrow

going

going

gone

Always You

waking next to you,
you so warm and round and smooth
like a stone on a beach.
i savor the moments as i first awaken,
warmth to warmth.
then you are up and moving
and when next i waken,
it’s to soft moist kisses
and a steaming cup of coffee,
and you.

always you.

The Chickadee

It began with a soft thump at the door wall, one slow Saturday afternoon. I knew what it was right away. Doorwalls are like open sky and air to birds, just a sheet of space and nothing. And with a feeder on the porch, the glass looks like just another direction to fly.

I peered through the doorwall to the green artificial grass carpet on the tiny porch, from my apartment that is suspended between forest and lake. Home to swans, sandhill cranes, Canadian geese, and a myriad of perching birds that serenade me most melodiously, from dawn till last fair blush of sunset. Cooing doves, warbling happy robins, cardinals and finches, jousting jays and blackbirds, raucous crows, and chickadees, singing eponymously...chickadee-dee-dee.

Onomatopoeia. Chickadee-dee-dee.

Huddled down against the plastic grass, the tiny bundle of black and gray, wings folded in rest, eyes half closed in a daze. A black capped chickadee. I huddled down against the drab carpet of my livingroom, with only the glass separating us. And watched him.

Tiny barely visible expansions of his chest showed he still breathed. And his eyes flickered, once twice, three times. My daughter left her perch on the couch, that being a lazy Saturday place to sit, book in hand, and came to cuddle against me, head to my shoulder.

“Oh, poor thing.” she whispers. “Can we pick him up?”

“We better not. Might scare him more.”

So we sat, by the glass and watched his fluttering eyes, the barely visible pulsations of his chest, sat and watched and prayed. I am a nurse for people with brain injuries. Now, I think, I am watching a bird with a concussion, from flying headlong, perhaps panicked, into my door wall.

Minute by minute we watched, and I prayed silently, knowing that God counted the very hairs on my balding head, and knew the fall of every sparrow, and the concussions of every chickadee.
Others came to the feeder, one by one. Chickadees, finches, a blackbird. From minute to minute, this little one, so tiny, so still, fluttered an eyelid or opened its beak a degree or two. Another chickadee came to the feeder, calling its name.

Chickadee-dee-dee.

Chickadee-dee-dee.

And the little one on the grass carpet stirred and its eyes opened a bit more.

More minutes passed, crawled, while Jennifer’s head grew heavy on my shoulder.

Chickadee-dee-dee.

And the little one opened its eyes all the way, gave a tiny shake to its wings, peeped a tiny peep.

More minutes. I prayed. Jennifer sighed.

“Will he be okay?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. Let’s wait and see.”

Chickadee-dee-dee. From his kin at the feeder.

His eyes startle open, wings flutter and stretch. Matchstick legs flex and raise him.

Chickadee-dee-dee, he responds, and looks around, up at the feeder.

Minutes more, just a few. His kin flutter away, startled by a dove on the railing.

Chickadee-dee-dee. And then they are back at the feeder. His wings flutter hard several times, he calls back, Chickadee-dee-dee. And suddenly takes flight.

A minuscule explosion of wings. Up to the feeder. He hangs from the peg on the feeder, helps himself to a sunflower seed, gripped between tiny claws, tap tap tapping it open for the kernel. And another. Then is gone.

Chickadee-dee-dee.

I like to think that there is a lesson for all of us, in the life of this tiny bird. Not for people with one disability or another only, but for any of us who have run headlong into life and fallen kersplat, stunned and shaken.

Take a few minutes. Dust yourself off. Listen to your friends. And take wing again.

Chickadee-dee-dee.

Will, In Passing (a man who was not what he claimed to be, and when caught, took his own life).

We all pass, as we must
In and out of this life
Leaving legacies, touching, breathing
Learning our way against misfortune

Perhaps now is not for understanding and
Asking questions that have no answer but
Seeking beyond knowing to find and
Caring beyond duty to love, to
Having trust in all, in others
And, when the grass is withered, there,
Long last, sun-blinded,
Leaves falling remind us of you.

Pray tell us; yield, for we must know why.
Have heart as you release our hands.
Do not go bitter, only go. Gently.

Reconciliation

(for my father, now I am his age,
as he was then, and weighed down
Now and again,
By my mortality and inexplicable sudden
sadness)

their was no reconciliation for me as
my father's tears flowed
like flooded gutters under a driving rain,
the down spout clogged with an old squirrel's nest.
who knew what debris and decay lurked in his heart
that backed up the bitter waters of grief .

he walked that black dog, he did,
round the block a few times and again,
one hand clinging to a cigarette,
the other deep in the pocket of his khaki shorts.
loose change, a gum wrapper, a Zippo.
but who knew what was really in there
with the lint and loose threads
and his plump warm hand.

one remembers a round bland face
suddenly split with a smile,
an unexpected joke shared only
with the boys...
"what do you call a...."
and in his brain was there a chaotic stew
of middle age, depression,
foreboding?
did mortality rear its unhandsome face
to leer at him in his darkest moments?

in the midst of his sadness,
islands of peace, normalcy.
a graduation, a baptism, a sports banquet,
when the world made more sense
and his heart beat hopeful tattoos
in his chest.

we did not know what was in there,
behind the tears and the sudden weeping.
we did not know what his clinging hands sought,
pale as they were
as they held us to his scratchy cheek,
as he cried for a reason we
who were so naive
could not fathom his pain
even now, thirty years on