AFTER READING MARY OLIVER, I GO TO THE POND
This trail is my brother
who I have seen
naked and
shaking in the rain
THE RARE BIRD
The rare bird does not know he is rare
When I stand open-mouthed in the wood
He knows only the fight.
. . . . . . . . I'll remind
you of this when you ask why we're friends.
(I have searched for you all of my life.)
SO THEN THE BIRDS
After the marathon
I return to the path where
I spent every salt-slick Saturday
on sun-scorched legs
numbly aware of how there’s
nothing here for me to do.
I think: When am I done running? When am I
done? When I’m pregnant? When my
knees give out? When I have the perfect
stomach or the perfect soul?
When I can’t find the room
to love it anymore?
And a red hot sun drapes, cat-languid,
over the pads of the English ivy, so rich
that you can barely glimpse bark, so rich
that I notice the passage of time.
And here, here is the sycamore which lodges
the double-crested cormorants. Today two of them:
winding their necks like a kinked fire hose to peer
over the canal, dotted with boats
delivering now a faraway pulse
of music stripped just to base, so low
that a soft gust of wind overtakes it, so low
beneath the crash of my shoes.
And new graffiti! Since the last run,
The backdrop for a sunlit cardinal
preserved in summer’s amber.
Now a twelve-year-old on a bike — “good
evening, miss,” like a foreign language textbook.
I think, “Is it good?” until the audacity
desiccates to vapor.
Actually, I don’t have anything else to do
in my whole big life
except to be here.
That’s when I’ll be done running,
When all the birds are dead.