may 29

I sat in a garden today

I sat and watched the world go on around me, without me

my own stories become a mess of watercolor just after the brush has touched it

I am small under this sky

and the birds and thistles and I – we see night as well as day and we weep when the skies are gray

turning our flowering faces towards the last pieces of light

nodding to the beat of the rolling breeze

while the blue phlox taps its foot and turns to flight

and the Japanese fern, with its kintsugi edges, whispers that anything can be made new

and the waves beat

beat

beat

as if to ask for recognition that they too are meaningful and golden

and all at once it is 1995 and this world is new

the stories heard are not enough to dip into charcoal ink and sink into a pen

they are just being written and no one has turned them imbittered and askew

I am just beginning

but the trees are wizards and have seen the land long before me

they are unintimidated by the clamor of wind and the quiet writer watching them, hopefully

asking of the wisdom of their roots

how the winds bent and beat them, and if this is why they are strong

while the flamingo stem of the cora bell, with its dainty pink droplets, bobs its head

yes, it says

yes

yes

the stories are true

you cannot unmake them

they are as true as in 1995

you have only to choose how you tell them, once they are alive.