flickers on walls and ceiling as I’m
drifting into sleep, with or without you
beside me. Sometimes his light
is bright as moments when we meet,
flares of feelings, or mere glimmers,
as we try to see who we are and who
we wish to be. See how he dances
along the beams, then disappears?
Seems capricious, but that’s the way it is
with us, you know. Flare and die. But now,
look how he leads us out into a summer
night alive with tiny flames as though
stars were falling round us! Let’s just
let go and open our shimmering arms.
An occasional hibernation will rejuvenate you.
—from a fortune cookie
Shadows on snow foretell another frozen
month. Across my road sun surprises
pussy willows, sparkling their beige feathers
like a Broadway show. Cruellest reminder:
I’ve been indoors long enough,
mourning the loss of my friend who adored all
shining moments, who never complained
of pain, even when surgeons took
most of her away, who worried
on New Year’s Eve that her nurses
might not have families at home, though she was
pinned to her sweaty bed by four
IV’s and her lovely neck, always
encircled with rhinestones or bright beads,
pierced by a feeding tube,
who listened, I’m sure, to poems
I read and songs her sister and I sang while she
lay unconscious at the end.
Today a cardinal, scarlet as birth blood,
perched on my bare lilac tree like a herald
announcing the approach of April rain,
and my friend, who loved crows,
came soaring back, her black wings waving
as she called, Come out, it’s time to live.