A Summer Evening Right Here
You & I sit on lawn chairs in the front yard.
There are too many roses blooming
because I am the gardener
and I can’t bear to thin the buds.
What if each one were a word or
a message? Irreplaceably precious?
Those yellow folds steadfastly
cup some spiders. Across the street
the neighbor’s old Ford up on blocks
rattles to the engine of her ‘89 Camaro
filling the expanse between sidewalks
with static which helps me not hear
my own heartbeat. The powerlines above
sag with some invisible weight.
You wonder out loud how much
they can take. Clouds above tinge pink.
Underneath them surely someone has died.
You might have died this year
but you didn’t. And that makes your existence
holy so I try to breathe your exhale
but the odor is oh-so-ordinary.
Still, I’ve stopped killing spiders
can’t stand to leave a single grape on the vine
or even to sleep sometimes because
since we’re all here it’s shockingly
extravagant and achingly fragile and
alertness seems called for.
Fire Season
1.
Wind, they say you are ancient.
A bird calls
without ever telling me its name.
Smoke from a fire in the next valley
enters the meadow.
The green-brown and haze
of a forest unmade.
The grass waits for rain
or the mouth of a deer.
And the mountains are slowly
imperfectly blotted out.
2.
The entire Western Slope
is sending signals
to the possibility trapped
in space.
Trees proffer their carbon
through flame.
They have so much to give.
We have everything to lose.
Even now what objects
are falling to the sea?
Can the slump be measured in acres
or tons? And how many lungs
of how many creatures
shut down when they read
the smolder?
3.
What’s the equation that tells me
how many tears I should shed
for 40,000 acres?
I’m not trained for emotional
triage on burns of the heart.
With no funeral how do I grieve
the once-living green?
And do I trust the posts
that claim redemption
even before the fire
is 1 percent contained?
Unseasonable
This warm sun casting
wide-eyed clarity on every leaf
withered to reflectionless rust
by a heat exceeding
October’s range.
These blackbirds clustering
at the persimmon tree
pecking the unripe flesh
because they don’t have dreams
of winter juices.
That hummingbird looking
for raspberries
up and down the vine,
a cultic dance of desiring
the sweet of last season.
Some habits outlive their sense
long before we see it,
their sense but not their beauty,
their rusty brown, their puckered tongues,
their iridescent green sheen on our backs.
Meredith Kirkwood's poetry has been published in Iron Horse Literary Review, Sky Island Journal, Rogue Agent, and ONE ART, among others. Find her on the web at www.meredithkirkwood.net.