Was I the only one to pray for you before the sun fully arrived to take you back to summer ashes or sky burial, feted by crowsong
Was I the only one to remember your face masked among morning shadows, wondering if the cat and I could see you — it was just yesterday, my sweet friend
Was I the only one to tend to you roadside ravaged and alone, laying you down in soft green comfort a gathering of god-words at your feet.
The chipmunk, through no fault of his own, sat trailside wounded perhaps I interrupted his prayer — final words on the wind — but he startled slowly and limped across my path with labored breath into the shady solace of honeysuckle as I whispered comfort in a soft, quiet voice stayed a while as witness
found myself still thinking about that chipmunk through no fault of his own wounded, trailside as the blue car crashed more silently than you might think into the white minivan on the busy byway pieces of metal flying in front of me, wondering
did he die without fear quietly — there — in sweet release?
Deep in the woods a spider casts her story across my eyelids invites an intricate dream of fine woven memory raindrops as sweet wine, and stars come down to glisten, listen eavesdrop into her delicate days the tightrope balance of patience and power the writhe and wriggle in her sacred dance, even she wonders sometimes what stories they have to tell — the ant, the fly, the beetle — but pays no mind for hunger is deep and instinctive, she whispers, it knows small mercy.
This is no place for a cricket I said out loud to him and to nobody, then lifted him gently into the confines of an old coffee cup, belly of a whale for all he knows of Columbia and Sumatra, but they sing there like he does, and who’s to say his are not folklore themselves — long-told stories passed down late at night, to our ear cacophony, to theirs a thousand tales a million years the universe in the short patch of grass now, there, and safe, as safe as Jonah I pray silently
forgive us our trespasses
as I walk back to my car parked askew in the crowded lot.
before the painted parking lines and engineered bridges before the pervasive blazes that welcomed every one before the storm that created a war zone there was a trail in the woods a simple trail that wound from an unpaved lot up a long, slow incline and down, slowly, into Eden or Shangri-La or Paradise or whatever you call the place that brings you back to yourself without contortions without effort except for moving and breathing and letting go and paying attention to the song of white pines, and the path of the pileated, to the fetal curl of spring ferns and the sweet Spring Beauty so small but significant you get down on your knees like a prayer whisper your apologies for the trespass weep at the loss of her secret spot, there at the base the Oak now fallen, our heavy footfall her sure demise
A most graceful dense mounding shrub with broadly spreading branches that create a weeping effect with the deep green, finely textured foliage.
What would the old tree say of her current predicament — wedged between the state road and the utility substation, her circadian rhythm forever disrupted by the flashing traffic light, her water source, runoff from the nearby shopping plaza
More than a century ago, she lived here on farmland acres, and they named her Weeping despite her attributes — a vernal fountain of perpetual joy — she, a specimen, divine fated to become more beautiful a champion of time
But the hour is cruel marches against the Sargent’s desire changes our perception of beauty sephos, Sepphōra, Sephora®
Her graceful curves and fountain sprays of green have grayed, and she is deaf to the song of her breeze
She is not long for this world — and probably for the best — we insist ourselves so loudly now even the bees are grieving.
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