Sometimes I write because an obsession catches me, and I write not so much to offer my thoughts to the world, but to get it out of my system so something else can come.  That’s why I have written this poem.  Perhaps it’s part of what this poem means, too.  I don’t think it’s a cohesive whole yet.  But it’s got to come out so I can find space inside myself to notice something else, to write about something else.

This year he’s made himself so visible to me,
sitting low in the twisting fingers of sycamore
so the morning sun sets his feathers on fire.

Or clashing into the magenta hearts of dogwood blossoms,
preening and fluffing, stretching his wings
in the golden light of morning.

His flame licks from  greening branch
to greening branch and I am helpless.
My heart falls down.

Did Mary Oliver say that first? Or Rumi?
When I say my heart lies in pieces on the floor
I do not mean, The world is grey.

What is the name of this thing?
Perhaps it is amazement over-ripe,
gone sour, fermented to obsession.

It is a good wine, this.  A drug.
I hear him whistle from the trees:
Just one more look.  Just one.

I cannot feed my children.
I can write nothing but the word Orange.
I find myself on the porch, watching the branches

and wonder how I got there.
Were orioles common as robins
I’d be a simple failure at my life.

As it is, I spend my year longing
for these days of whistling flame,
for these mornings when my heart

is beckoned from its winter shell
and shattered on the rocks
like a thousand shining mirrors.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The silence that I had for a few moments this morning
2. Tiny wonders
3. Shattering and shining
4. My mother, who has given me so much, particularly the gift of noticing.
5. This fuzzy cat who is making it almost impossible to type.

May we walk in Beauty!