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.