green sage
stayed green all winter
against all odds
reminds me of
green sage
stayed green all winter
against all odds
reminds me of
gratitude is healing
i’m trying to take my treatment
put myself outside
to get washed in the rain
driving to petrolia
hills trees coast fog
tonight
lots of clouds but also
bright moon
a thick sliver
between the sun and the moon
who governs me?
see the planets
red blue and green yellow
I thought the earth remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
-Mary Oliver (“Twelve Moons”)
watching the sky fade from pale to paler
what if we had made a life together?
the trees ask their questions
shivering in the almost darkness
one lamp lit
moth dying under it
toasting its little damp wings
calm and crying
the metal base of the lamp
catches it