This Time
Katie Bierach
I missed birdsongs, flowers and gray waves
while reading prose or sweeping the kitchen
on Wednesday afternoons.
The days, river water, passed; I stagnated indoors.
Water lengthens greening leaves, which then dry,
crushed, crumbling, to be buried under sand.
Seven a.m. raging giggles
(while we brushed each other’s hair,
waiting for oatmeal),
Sunday bike rides through skyscraping redwoods with Dad,
and Spring days raising caterpillars,
waiting for the chrysalis, for the fearless symmetry,
all have blown away.
The indoor windlessness, the stillness, stifles.
So this time it is Wednesday
and I lie in the sun-warmed grass
(by the blackberries we gathered)
and I think of you.
I feel the rumble of your rocketship heart taking off:
a gold finch proclaims something that only you could understand.
I see a swallowtail charge forward,
exploring the pink and white columbines,
then pause to fold, stretch, before tonguing the liquid nectar.
How long did we wait for wings to dry?
Oh, to wake up to towering flowers
that droop their chins low and loving like our mother’s lullaby gaze,
and to tip-toe our tiny tinted feet, sprinkling pollen across spongy petals
like powdered sugar onto Dad’s pancakes,
and to let our thoughts soak into and wade through the glowing, sun-backed petals,
then fly toward cherry blossoms or budding orange trees . . .
This time I’m only looking and breathing,
without focusing on money, food, or uncertainty,
just honeysuckle hanging and jasmine under palms,
the finches, the butterfly, the columbines,
and you.
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