july 15

no one has been here since
the last rain, the sand dimpled below

the paths of stormclouds.  This heat
feels different, like a breath

that lays against you, steals your air.
the killdeer nest is empty

even the eggshells are gone and the evening
feels new and brightly cracked.

again and again you submerge
in the goldgreen light of the river, opening

your eyes to smooth stone,
to the hazy cold

that is always here
at the edge of the world.

july 14

morning sun through waterstained windows
while the coffee brews, midsummer

slowly stretches through the house, the garden
lazily weeded, the plans for the day unwritten.

waiting in uncertainty is what I do
when I wait for you, the grass morningwet

nearly to my knees, the sky still undecided.
the robins have finished with their nest

so I can finally take it down
and paint the shed they built on.

the first day

For the first time in months, ice turned to water

and the sun made heat instead of just shadows.

For the first time the day felt like it was not
entirely winter, but beginning the soft caving in

that begins something else.  A V of geese, low and perfect
over the roof are lit differently today; the slant of sun

lighting the precision of their wings
softens suddenly and without fanfare.

I have an unexpected day to myself, a chair
near the woodstove, a cleared table to work at.

I'm still being realistic.  The frost still blurs to opaque
the mudroom windows.  The sparrows still crowd

the branches of trees like dark commas.  We are still
at winter's heart.

But the shift has happened, a collection of light
between trees one minute sooner, then another;

the shell has cracked and
there's no putting it back
together.

Lyme

Just days past solstice and the hours stretch
like strung wires across another sky rippled blue

her fever's been gone for days and still
it is your fear that snaps you from bed

each morning.  You run on wide dirt roads
because the snakes are out 

and you need to see

where your feet fall.  Just yesterday 
 you passed a small one, the diamonds
along its back just coming into focus.

You run farther and faster than you ever have-
antelopes freeze on hilltops and you
are the only moving thing for miles.

When she wakes you'll hold her and ask
all the same questions, how do you feel

how do you feel?  The olive tree blooms
and fills the air with thick honey, wet

black calves are licked clean by their mothers,
the river runs lower than it should.

It's June and unbelieveably lovely and
what you feel is the bright stone of fear

between your lungs.  This disease doesn't
exist where you live, each question turns back

on itself.  You watch her sleep away
the middle of each blue day, imagining
the fight happening in her small pale body.

You wait each hour out and try to trust
the medicine, trust her same freckled smile.

Her sister finds a swallow's nest, reads
paperbacks on the porch, dreams

of mountain lions walking
right up to the house.

beginning again, a rough draft

It seems it shouldn't feel so hard, this sitting down

for a minute to type a few words, or

knowing where to begin, choosing between

describing the small puffed clouds of her sleeves,

the campfire ash and marshmallow 

contentment of her face,

or the way her older sister's bare feet

curled around the warm belly of her pony,

sideways spring sunlight holding her.

Knowing where to start 

is where I falter.

But the light this morning is perfect, fat robins

perched on every fencepost, the invisible trill

of sandhill cranes overhead.  We work ourselves into

a rhythm even when we feel the most scattered.

Mike has eased into spring work, spending seven days

a week in the fields, with a kind of grace I could never have.

But I've learned to blend most of the farmchores into my days

driving the old blue truck out, followed by a trail of hungry mama cows,

setting the stick shift to the slowest gear, holding the steering wheel

at a straight course, then jumping from the cab to climb

aboard the moving trailer, to balance while we roll across the field,

forking hay to my hungry friends.  I'm becoming more graceful

with this whole process, and it feels something like a parade,

my pose altogether different than a beauty queen waving

from a convertible.  My legs wide for balance, pitchfork wielding 

last year's grass, baler twine hanging from my back pocket,

my mind and body in the same place at the same time,

and maybe starting again 

isn't so hard after all.

getting there

We leave later than planned, last minute

stop at the gas station, grocery store, 

water bottles filled, almonds and candycorn 

clutched in fists.

Facing north we start to sing - we know 

a few Halloween songs, 

wagon wheel, the circle game.

Our valley unfolds like a rumpled

bedsheet, the last stands of bright aspen,

cottonwood vibrate gold against the muted brown

of October farmland.  We follow the river north.

The wind

becomes a force like the highway itself- 

pushing back

as we move through it.

Bruised sky and sudden dash of rain 

against the windshield, the car quiets as the girls pull on 

headphones, drift off through time and space 

in a magic treehouse.

Near Deer Lodge the sky clears again,

sideways light of late afternoon turns semis

into magical beasts, each falling leaf caught

in the draft of traffic into pirates' gold.

I've been traveling these highways

all my life, they are familiar paths

to the places I love.  I have a story for 

every small town along they way; I know 

that my grandmother would order 

the grilled cheese at Trixie's Saloon

in Ovando,  I know the fishing access where my 7th grade

class stopped for lunch on a field trip,

my wonderful teacher reading us poetry as we sat beside

the Little Blackfoot.  I know the empty, rolling stretch

of highway where, at thirteen, my stepdad pulled over

and told me to switch seats with him so I could learn

to drive.

And I know the destination.  A place 

stitched into my soul- the smell

of glacial silt and lakewater, the mix

of mist and larch needles, and in October

the sound of geese

moving on.

a million things to be: portraits 5/52

"Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
'Cause there's a million things to be
You know that there are..."