When I left the mountains,

there was a space in the pit of my belly

that thought it couldn’t be filled

with things like the things at my back:

the mule deer in the falcate sun,

sideways on a morning hill;

footprints of an elk and her calf

pressing into a natural spring

before the soft earth was hardened;

the nighttime yelp of coyotes and rabbits—

not always a genial sound

but a reminder of the wild world at work.

 

Then down from the mountain the prairie spoke:

Dear, sweet woman,

her voice that rose with lavender,

you are mistaken.

 

And then she gave to me the madness of birds

—all of them—

they dart before the afternoon rains, and they are pendulums through

the sky when monsoons bounce above the ground.

They spin their heads with brightness and warbling and unpeel the skin of

nature forgotten.

She gave me the Jays in the willows and the Killdeer along lakes and rivers—

the Killdeer–

who jump through irrigation ditches with pecking, poking beaks; too quick on

the shell of a Snapping Turtle and too fast along a blade of grass to make it

move.

She gave me the Lark Bunting’s plateaued nest and unspoiled white down; the

prairie notes of a Red-winged blackbird.

She gave me their wings—brilliant colonies and communities of airborne

partners unending and saturating that same space in my belly;

mocking my incertitude

through their flight.

He thinks he’s lost me in the store.

Mad because he can’t find his matchbox car; (the one I told him not to bring because history has a way of repeating itself with five-year-olds),

he hides behind the rack of Hallmark Cards and then wanders farther. He doesn’t know I am watching him.

But I am.

And when he comes back to me, his head is down and the disappearing fullness of his cheeks peek out from above his neck.

He lost his baby fat somewhere between the parked car and the aisle of perennials.

I reach for his hand and guide him toward the Evergreens; the little ones that can be pruned and shaped when planted in a container.

His fingers pull away from mine to touch their prickly texture and we pick two; their green is vibrant and otherworldly when we load them into the truck.

Everyone likes our trees he says, and he must be right:

the shoppers who push their empty carts back through the parking lot smile at his proud, dirt-smudged  face as his nose brushes the scent of sapling promise.

When we are home, we go about the business of moving the eager trees into their bereft planters, and the little big boy at my side starts to talk.

Don’t be scared, he pets their temporarily faded branches;

Hurry mom, he insists, touching the first tree like a favored cat.

You’ll like your new home, he whispers into their upward stems while dirt is poured.

Then the second tree into the empty planter: both are dually satisfied and his talk more confident this time.

It’s okay tree, his singsong words are a poem caroled across the yard when he runs to retrieve the watering can and then the open mouth of the long hose.

When the two meet, a feathery spray of water dampens my clothes and we laugh.

I’ve grabbed the pruning shears by now,

and I even out just few branches on each tree before we set them in the sun

so the little gardener can pour the arching stream of water into their roots.

 

Today I stood underneath the belly of a goose,

its feathers formed the perfect intersection of down

from each side of a soft, plump paunch.

 

Then past my arched neck and over the road,

the falter of a bent wing threw the bird off balance

and I caught my breath for the goose and for the car below.

 

But then its flight amended towards the greater air,

and my fingers unfastened from a tight, frozen clutch

wondering at palms that know how to merge

sometimes without cognitive consent.

 

And when we have tilted sideways on uncorrected wing—

when we are bent in half by the unexplained

and move quickly towards the asphalt,

or watch the perfect spine of others try and correct their flight,

 

somehow the faces of our furrowed hands know to come together

and mouth the words that have always been there

for us, and from the vastness of sky

 

Remember how we left the kitchen warm

to high-step through the falling snow;

the call from school coming hours ago.

 

How we knew that fine red line would form on our shins where the boots rubbed,

but still we floated through that feathery, sallow sand

to meet the neighbor-boy who hiked a mile up the hill

with his eyelashes stuck together

and his joyous face chapped and numb with exultant cold.

 

Spirits of the dead soared and sunk repeatedly

when we built the network of tunneled snow

from which to hide and then fly through the air on our sleds;

adrenalin and joy stronger than hunger.

 

Yet a lunch deferred awaited us in the kitchen,

like childhood revisits the adult;

hot chocolate and tomato soup lingered on the table for discovery,

grilled cheese expecting to thaw our mouths.

 

Then banana bread of course,

before we were obliged to send the neighbor-boy back down the hill

ahead of the early darkness.

Where he would see in the fading light

a pair of barn owls splitting the air silently above his head

 

and those frozen stars of white

would cling to our names forever.

There is a picture I have
of she and I during hunting season
slinking through sage on our bellies,
breathing in the cold November air
and exhaling smoke-like circles that span the distance between us.

Her gloves have the tops cut off
and the tips of her fingers show purple already
even though we have just begun.

Behind us,
the wind is carrying in
a mass of snow-filled clouds;
the first flurries dainty and transient
on the signal-orange of our jackets.

We begin to scale the callous, lifeless rocks
that cover the hummocks between hunter and hunted

then crest the rising hill to see the huffing herd
upwind and unaware of our presence.

My nervousness is obvious, I know.

She watches me from under the tugged edge of her knit cap.

Breathe,

she reminds me.

You’ve got time,

she reminds me

and places her stiffened fingers on my back.

Take your time.

I watch the elk lift their noses to the incoming storm—

their regality unmatched.

I can’t

With a whisper loud enough to startle them all

I just can’t.

Aren’t they beautiful
she asks, watching them go

and turning the safety on.

Show me how you lift the sky

carrying your red;

show me how you wake and swell

and climb

into the billows where we meet.

 

Show me your crimson veins

over the rooftops and trees and the mountains deferred,

and I will show you how they stand in the cherry-dipped corners of their yards,

reaching high to touch.

 

See how they hold their children shoulder-high, and smile;

listen to their dogs bark and their horses whinny.

 

See how some carry the weight of the day in their eyes,

holding

holding on—

as they focus and stare

and grow lighter as you soar.

 

Show me your perfect arch into the shadows,

and I will stand in the corner of the upstairs patio

and get my picture taken with you over my shoulder

while I’m laughing,

 

because that’s something we’ve all done.