A shadow moves
across my mother’s back yard
and I look up in time to see
the papa hawk in hunch mode
heading west.
I stand up
from my chair in the corner
and the mama hawk is there
and as she circles the neighbor’s big tree
whose name I need to learn
the one where the ravens like to sit
I see the waning half moon is there, too
and we are all of a piece
the moon
the hawk
the tree
and me.
There is this little bird who comes to the corner of my mother’s back yard where I sit in the mornings when I can. Today she is poking around the pots of succulents looking for bugs, her white and gray and black and flashes of yellow vivid in the early sunlight. I watch her dart about, sip my yerba maté, warm cup cradled in both hands. I’ve only ever seen her by herself, and I wonder again today if she is all alone. I say metta for her. May you be safe and free from harm. May you have everything you need to thrive. May you be happy. May you have companionship if you want it. On the last wish, I can’t help thinking, oh, to me our companionship is dear. Later, I finally find her in my bird book, a yellow-rumped warbler. And, too, once I know what kind of bird she is, I see another of her species approach her. Scolding? Wanting sex? I haven’t seen her since, but I’m still hoping she’ll be back.
I sit beneath the lime green umbrella in the corner of the yard and drink my yerba maté. I remember the moon and look for her in the sky. She is right there, only a turn of my head, not behind the neighbor’s tree or hidden by the umbrella. My daylight moon. I turn back to study the top of the ridge before me in search of movement or the silhouette of a hawk perched on a shrub or the bare branch of a dead bush. Once I saw a deer grazing at the very top of the hill. I’d always wondered if they climbed the steep rocky sides. I let my mind drift, drink my tea. Later I wonder if I can still see the moon, and I turn to look again. There is writing in the sky where the moon was. For a moment, I think it is a message from the universe. It startles me to find it there, but in that first second, the possibility doesn’t seem odd at all. Why shouldn’t there be a message in the sky for me? In the next moment, I realize it’s skywriting. “Narek,” it says. Or maybe “Marek.” The word is moving north, the letters beginning to come apart. I see the moon then, the waning crescent just beside the “k.” Behind the name is a perfect heart, holding its shape as it follows Narek across the sky.
I told you this already
when I was sixty-two
but this year
while I’m sixty-three
I plan to learn to sing
“When I’m Sixty-Four”
because I believe
I should sing it
all year long
to everyone
who loves me.
Late at night
I learn the lyrics
on my laptop
the Beatles’ voices
in the quiet living room
my impish delight
breaking through
my exhaustion.
I hope every time
I sing it
I will feel
just like this.
Sleepy eyes
close again and again
Dreams dust my edges
nonsense lines
dialog with somewhere else
What a world I might know
if I could lasso it all
and bring it forward
onto the page
dig for messages
and buried treasure
I hand you a shiny relic
with a broken wing
and watch you
turn it over in your hands
in the late afternoon light.
The first time I was blasted open by wilderness was when I drove through the northern state of Baja California. The winding two-lane highway with no shoulder, no evidence of humankind anywhere except the road, only open undulating desert and scrub brush in every direction. No dwellings, no telephone poles, no water until the cats and I rounded a bend and saw the Sea of Cortez.
My eyes close now while I type
I begin to nod off these days
fingertips stilled on the keyboard
The other night I fell asleep eating dates
scattered pits in all directions
I find one with bite marks
on the floor the next day
It used to be sunflower seed shells
I’d wake up with in the covers
But dates?
No Holds Barred 