The Crying Tree
(April 2020)
Mist crowns her branches
forms rivulets
that creep down her trunk
fall like tears
upon the forest floor.
On May’s still-cool afternoons,
women, bare-breasted like birds,
form a circle around her
dancing and chanting
The sway of their long, cotton skirts
an offering
like a handkerchief.
Young couples walk beneath her
their hands — and something deeper
intertwined
looking up at this Giantess
stoic in the wind, dappled by sunlight.
Redwood and water shed.
I know what she weeps for.
It’s desire, mostly. Not loss.
Or, perhaps
it is joy
in receiving from above
what nourishes the soul
when we’re not looking.
It Snows in May
(May 2020)
It snows in May
in my California garden.
Pale yellow rose petals drift
from the Lady Banks vine
climbing the two sequoias
in a back corner.
A volunteer from the neighbor’s yard.
Thick, trunk-like feelers creeping
all the way up to the trees’ crowns.
Each fifty feet high
if one had to guess.
Planted by my first husband and I
on a summer evening after work.
We pulled up onto the lawn
in his white Chevy station wagon
at dusk, turned on the headlights
and shoveled the Earth.
There were no fences yet.
Abandoned farmland sprawled
beyond the garden’s border,
collapsed chicken coops,
browned grasses,
leading to the foothills.
We hammered stakes into the soil
and fastened the 4-foot nursery trees with ties, securing them
from future winds.
I am back in this home now.
Two grown children
another failed marriage
and 40 years later.
And it was May
when I sat in the spring sunlight
beside the towering redwoods
and answered the phone call from
a doctor…
Test… Positive…Nasty cure…
was all I could hear
a black tunnel appearing before me
my heart thumping
mind whirling
I wanted to fix it NOW.
It was the week
both my ex-husbands remarried
and I was suddenly an unwitting bride
wedded to glass vials of herbal tinctures
seemingly concocted by forest fairies
yet so powerful they caused vertigo,
nausea, stabbing headaches.
Amber plastic bottles of prescription drugs, Biophoton sessions, Zero Balancing treatments.
Something to do with magnets
— I don’t remember now.
Lots of doctor’s visits
not covered by insurance.
Sleeplessness, joint pain, anxiety, fatigue, migraines, herxing, detoxing,
low-histamine diets, depression.
And hardest of all,
self-love, lots of self-care
acceptance, tears, screams
some healing.
Days, weeks alone,
some healing.
Surprising moments of gratitude.
Hope and then none,
more healing,
frustration, pleading, acceptance…
And 4 years later
it still snows in my garden in May.
A neighbor across the street
says she waits each spring for the rose vine to make its show,
thousands of little yellow buds opening.
I’m no longer waiting.
I have bloomed.
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