Sherry

The river hangs bells for Christmas
along the sand turned crystal.
My steps disturb them just enough,
and the gentle chimes
and watery words
say this:

Goodbye,
to the sun we remember
crossing your girl-moon face,

goodbye
to words dropped on the table
between you and the rest of us,

my coffee cup,
our napkin,
a plate of all good things.

And more than the food,
the sweetness,
more than the sun,
now before us this winter
without you,

more than your children,
your family,
more than our grief,

is this--

ice bells on the river,
silence,
the frozen steps in sand,

--reminders you're closer now
to everything.

I feel you here even at the farm,
as alpacas saunter from the barn
and the air warms

before the next snow comes.

I will feel you at the gathering
of mourners, we'll talk about you,
you'd be embarrassed but it's ok.
We're all bringing lucky pots,
I made brownies.

I will feel you in the teary eyes,
the gulp of air your sister takes
while telling the story of your passing,

how your heart skipped away,
Thanksgiving was an unsteady boat,
your oars fell, you slipped from us so gently,
like water, like a song that ends too soon,

like the sun turned cold for a day
and a night,

we looked up
and you were gone.

But I remember,
and when I see the photo on the poster
on the door to the Saloon

it all comes back.
You come back in the telling,
in the memory,

in the thousands of bells
chiming the completion

of your interrupted song.




for Sherry
because we love you

c2009 Flood Water Press

Seven Pigeons and the White Angel

For two hours I hiked along beaches
of the Snoqualmie, fog gray fingers
played in red and gold leaves,
dark-faced shadows shrank behind
the stones, and the sun shot pins through
purple green water on bushes.
The beach was deserted.

The great salmon burrowed their heads
as far upstream as they could.
Their tired backs looking frost-bit,
spotted tails churned troughs of
black silver. I stood spellbound.
Listened to water singing so low
I could almost not hear it at all,
but there was a hunger to the notes.

Above my head a flock of pigeons circled,
one white angel in their midst. I found out later
they pulled a young man from the river
drenched and unbreathing the evening before.
They worked on him a long time, they said,
but the spirit just kind of leaked right out of him.
I think it rose up into the fog coming that night
like a blanket, like an unexpected answer
to a life unevenly driven,

I think it turned white like the salmon,
I think its wings opened--
right there in the midst of a flock
of common pigeons,

you should have seen it,
circling a few times

just before leaving.


***


for Mac

October 13, 2009

Four Feathers from Fall City

For days I walked the streets of Fall City,
an unusually grounded little town,
its farm houses egg yolk and pond blue painted,
dormer windows shy and alert,
old porches nodding off,
mowed lawns, red barn hen house,
chickens reciting poetry over their morning egg,
and I passed by two feathers
and didn't pick them up.

Today I stopped and looked into a tree
like a wide hand curving its fingers open
with five crows fidgeting into different poses.
They interrupted and complimented each other
constantly. One flew off. There on the ground
at my feet were four crow feathers.
Two long wing pinions and two wide tail feathers.
Blue spears. Traveled shadows.

I put them fanned out like onyx knives
on the wood table by the soft light and three
rock candles Heather gave me.

At night, they float over me singing
old Beatles songs, tapping lightly on the window,
forgetting their names, how they got here,

where they misplaced their
warm black bodies.



for Shoeless Joe,
the greatest one-and-a-half legged crow
I ever met.

October 6, 2009