Monthly Archives: September 2023

I walk across the morning grass
dew-wet green
to untangle your long leash
Again
leash you thread around tree trunks
at the lawn’s edge
over and over, every morning
every evening.
Once you’ve knotted it thoroughly
you sit beneath the tree you’ve anchored to
with no idea how the rope got so short.
Sometimes you bark to get my attention then.
But mostly you wait,
look up at the leaves and squirrels
and irritated blue jays until
I stop reading or talking, weeding or writing or daydreaming
and notice you’re stuck
and come to you
across the wet grass to unknot your rope.
Even then, unless I take your collar and guide you
you do not always notice
at least not right away
that you’re set free,
unknotted, untangled,
with room again to move

I pedal and coast through the year
summer was one long, luscious glide

Now I’ve paused to have a drink, look around
Study the landscape for my next move
That tall hill of early autumn education

I.
In a separate dream last night,
I owned a small, soft, gray and white bird
with black markings so delicate
they looked painted on
though
in waking, walking around life
I have never owned a living bird

II.
The only bird I’ve ever owned is Pete, the wooden parrot—three feet tall, painted soft shades of green and pink like those pastel mints served at dinner parties in crystal bowls in the 1960s. Or at least, that’s how it was with my mother.
Pete the parrot was trash-picked off a Florida curb, for love, by me—and brought home as the single piece of carry-on luggage that, to date, has gotten the most comments of any odd thing I’ve brought on a plane.
No one else loves Pete as much as I do. Truly, no one understands what I see in him.
This is not the first time.
He hangs now on my bedroom wall where he is the first and last thing I see each day. If it is a day when I end up in my own bed. And excepting when I take him off his hook for special occasions.
Or when we’re traveling.

III.
In college, Anne had a bird. You knew to be careful and move quickly in and out of her dorm room because she let the bird fly around inside. All of this, as so much about my darling friend Anne, was
Against The Rules
I was always a little bit nervous about the rule breaking and also nervous about
tiny claw foot landing
on my shoulder, or my scalp
Plus, this was college—so there were
often
Happy Drunkards with much to say
barging in and out
leaving doors open
in their exuberance to be near
others of their kind

IV.
Once, after I divorced your father
and it was just you and I in our house,
when you were still in high school
Junior year? Senior? Old enough
to know that you knew Everything
and that I was Woefully Uninformed,
a dunce, really—which led to headache for you
(from all that eye-rolling)

During that time, we came home once
and found a large black bird in our house
though the windows were closed
The bird— possibly a crow possibly not
as that was one of the many things
I did not know in those days
or for that matter, in these days still

Back then, you threw a blanket
over the bird and carried it outside
where it could fly away
and did

Both of us blamed you for letting it in through
a long circuitous path tied to an unlatched garage door

Though, honestly, we never knew for certain
that it didn’t arrive from some parallel universe
Where Things Were Different

V.
When I was a small child, back in the days of pink and green mints in crystal dishes, my grandmother owned a parakeet she kept in a tall domed cage. They lived in my house, my grandmother and her bird.
Wings and cages made no sense to me when we were surrounded by windows, so I opened the cage, opened a window.
Later, there were tears.

Epilogue.
In last night’s dream,
our dogs killed the little gray bird
with its soft feathers and delicate black markings.
Not out of hunger or hunting instinct—
No, the bird was a casualty,
a side effect of Dog Exuberance.
Or that tiny, soft, most recent bird
was killed only for a coda
to close this latest chapter
in my life with the birds.

church of the lake
small, white clapboard
only opens in summer
May through September
for the lake people.

Already, now
before leaves even fall,
doors are locked, signboard
tucked away in the vestibule
and the forest returns
with its slow, steady gait

seedlings sprout on the brick front walk
wild grapevines trellis the entrance
pinecones and acorns toss themselves
along the path, make themselves at home

and the lake people?
Gone to their winter elements
some in cities far away
the others, with a small splash,
return to the deep waters
far down below the dying water lilies
Where they wait again for May

not a metaphor—
first morning of our school year
rain,
then a rainbow