what I've learned from life, by Mary Elyn Bahlert
The tree is empty
save for red berries and full, green leaves,
until you come with a partner one Saturday, early.
Checking out the territory, you dance on its branches:
one inside - then out -
one inside - then out.
I have questions for you:
is it nesting time?
can this be your new home?
will the berries be enough?
The tree is empty,
filled only with hope
as you navigate its branches.
I sit, empty too, still as a plant,
watching you:
afraid to move -
scared you'll fly away.
The trees are red and yellow, still –
panting for wet. Their silence hurts me.
One fruit tree in the city-orchard
mistakes fall for spring,
blossoming out of season.
As dawn broke today
also the skies broke and fell.
Ahhhhh – rain!
I give thanks, bowing to the skies
on behalf of the trees. —Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2014
I thought the dark skies, the distant thunder, lightening crashing
were outside the screen door.
Inside, I smelled the dust, heavy.
Like a fly on the screen, I waited for the storm.
I thought the heaviness came from outside,
that it drifted into the house on beads of water in the air, or on a cloud -
part of the sky, fallen to earth.
Sometimes, here, the air gets heavy. Sometimes the earth smells of itself after a heavy rain. Then, I lift my head as something inside of me - heavy, old - moves.
I am the dark sky.
I am the distant thunder.
I am the crashing bolt of light.
I swing my head into the air
to rid myself of the storm, a bridle.
I know the storm.
I know its edges, lightening-marked. I know its dangers:
the draught of wind, the spiral cloud -
threatening, the building rage - the sizzling.
I know the calm: emptiness in the wake of the wind.
I thought the storm had arrived uninvited:
a stranger, short to stay, not kind, but firm -
a stranger who changed the landscape, forever.
I thought the storm had drifted here, mistaken. I imagined it that way.
TheWisdomYears.org 