The robins nesting next door
explore the honeysuckle
in my yard. Sometimes leaves
rattle and then a young
spotted robin emerges,
round red honeysuckle berry
grasped in its beak.
The robins drink up
honeysuckle as if
imbibing the wine
of holy grail.
The arching branches
of honeysuckle
trail the ground,
heavy with fruit.
Even my dog,
lazing in the shade,
emerges from his nap,
the fur of his ears
stained red.

In summer, zucchini multiply
like large litters of puppies
and grow as quickly.
Snap one off the stalk
and the white milk sap oozes like dew.
What funny nurslings,
suddenly so large
I cannot contain them in my arms.
Loading them into a carton,
I carry bulging boxes
to the soup kitchen.
In the carton,
zucchinis jostle and shift
like litter mates
arching their curved necks
as if to wrestle.

Even joy
has an edge
like the gold
that begins to emerge
on maple leaves
in August.
The celebratory
gold leaves
curl inward:
colorful foil
to herald
a new season;
the leaves, little mirrors
of sunlight.

When the pocket gopher
carves tunnels
with tooth and claw,
it harvests plant life
to its burrow,
nature’s honey
spilling underground.

With the flick of a wrist,
the teeth of the can opener
unfasten metal seams,
teeth rotating on an axle
to open windows of light.
To become fire,
first the maple leaf
unbolts the chlorophyll;
then it shines.

I wrote this quite some years ago (c. 1996) when I had two babies in diapers.

I like the smell of my baby in my arms.
I like her sweat.
I don’t mind her spit-up.
I don’t even mind the smell
That reminds me it’s time to change her diapers.
I can sleep with my baby in my arms for hours.
If I have held her or nursed her for a long time,
With her head cradled in the hollow of my shoulder,
She may even start to smell a little bit like me.

Sometimes, when I am holding my baby in my arms,
I remember faces of mothers
Who lost their children.
They turned their faces to the side,
Searching.
They are rooting,
Searching for their children.
Even if you lose a child when she is twelve,
You will remember her as an infant.
The moist plump baby hands.
The baby smells.
The sweet clear trusting eyes.

I wrote this poem in high school. I wrote it in memory of my friend Laura. She died at age 15 of hepatitis on July 14, 1978. We were both American kids, living in Koudougou, Burkina Faso. Today for some reason seems like a good day to honor her memory.

O God, I tried to hold your arm when you were dying.
I thought to shake some life out of it.
You were strong then still, stubborn like always—
Pulling your whole body into a knot:
Legs on side, knee-caps touching, feet crossing.
How could I reach into your spine,
Push back your limbs to their more lively form?
You were not clay but woman.
I did not touch your hand,
For fear your fingers lock in mine.
I took your wrist instead.
It was hard for me, you know,
Grabbing at someone who slipped in a hole
Where I did not care to follow.

Remember when you harvested the millet
With that short-handled hoe?
Everyone said that no white girl worked harder.
Remember the summer you taught me to swim?
The dogs we played with?
The men your father refused your hand?

You were fighting, Laura.
As though you’d break your arm to free it of my grip.
I’d given up sooner.
You were a dark colt.

How the dark
nudges us
towards the light.
Even the blossom
is primed for light.
Her petals wait
expectantly,
ready to unfurl,
each bud
poised for dawn.

If I told you
that I write
to stave off the darkness,
that I light each poem
like a child lighting fireflies
(if one could)
to keep the dark at bay,
would you believe me?

Darkness overturned
my world one day
suddenly, silently,
like the approach of a storm
on a sunny afternoon.
Clothed in darkness
like a thundercloud,
a friend turned stranger.

Darkness required no key
to unlock the door.
A friend clothed
like a stormcloud
entered my home
and left destruction.

Until then,
I never knew
such darkness existed.

When the blanket of darkness settled,
it was so heavy,
I could barely
pull my knees up
under the blanket.

Of course, even when I couldn’t see it,
the dark had always been there.
Dark nips at our heels
like a sheepdog nipping,
or like the undertow.

Now when I see
the first threads of dawn
tipping, overturning
night’s dark loom,
I reach for sun’s
first gold ray.

Day banishes the dark
and weaves the dominant bronze,
the red, the ochre, the luminescent air.
Darkness circumscribed by light.

The dark in the rug
serves only to showcase
a weaver’s choice of color.
The black of the sunflower
is only seed,
that once broken,
spawns stems heavy with gold.

If I told you
that I write
to stave off the darkness,
that I light each poem
like a child lighting fireflies
(if one could)
would you believe me?

That I store each poem
like a seed.

Whether the crane wife
was human or celestial,
I do not know,
arriving as she did
in a storm
at a lonesome weaver’s doorstep
to cook his rice and boil his tea.

When his strength failed,
or when his sales slowed
(the details depend
on the storyteller),
she set about
putting air in his sails,
shut the door to his workshop;
there, transformed into her true shape,
she plucked feathers from her wings.
She was the shuttle now
all angles and movement
as she stepped into his loom.
Of course, he didn’t know
what it cost her.
When he realized,
it was too late.
With her remaining strength,
she flew off.

A true story, I believe.
I see the more familiar version
in my backyard each year
when the mother dove feathers
a nest with down, baring her chest,
feather by feather.

With tragic certainty
we weave ourselves
into the lives of others:
Our gift, a bit of ourselves.
Yes, everything has a cost.
We do what we can
with what we have.
In storms, we let go of deadweight
as we can, bailing water,
inching the Titanic to shore.

But what is life,
if not a hollowing,
a giving up.
As in a Japanese
woodcut of cranes,
it is the deep grooves
in the woodblock
that give life
to cranes in flight
suspended effortlessly
above the wave.

After the great lightning strikes,
the marine sky crests like a wave,
while the storm nourishes
the veins of the earth.

Lightning solos soften
to the rhythmic beating of rain
on the tent roof.

Somewhere, surely,
lightning split
a ponderosa in two.
Somewhere,
a fir caught fire.

This morning,
laced with heavy dew,
the flowers nod their heads:
the daisy, the blue flax,
the wild rose,
the esoteric flora
of the Apache forest.

Somewhere now
a ponderosa begins the hard work:
Charred bark
and needles drop ever so gently—
finally joined by falling branches.
Even the trunk
doubles over
and collapses into the ashes
on the ground floor,
nourishing the soil.

As I speak, a piece of ponderosa bark,
irregular in shape, light as balsa,
lights on my shoulder.

Ponderosa bark,
charred and burnt, offers treasure:
amber pearls of sap.