Show up, keep showing up, I tell myself,
open, tender, like the iris dappling the field,
every morning their small purple faces gathering
rain, sun, upturned still to each snap
and clap of wind.
Some days the ask feels impossible
to take in each fresh horror and fall under
the knife-ache rush of tears, let in the stories
that summon a world beyond belief, skin
my trust on savagery and greed.
Is it hiding to choose to lose myself
in the light that wreathes the pine branches
in opulence, the knockwood roses
spilling their pink ruffles along the sidewalk,
song of the northern mockingbird, how
its multitudes call to me, beg me to stand
for one more moment in the soft
praying grass, its emerald promise
almost unbearably bright?
Isn’t this, too, a kind of showing up
and loving fiercely?
When the day touches my shoulder
with its knell of despair and the grief rises
for all I long to save, these are the doorways
that bring me back — deep presence
of the lacebark pine, bees nosing
the overgrown Russian sage, the fox
that slinks across the street before dusk,
stops in the parking lot and stares,
as if aware of my gaze, both of us haunted
by some bleak and breathing danger.
But for now there is its lean body,
low to the ground, and my wondrous silence,
which is how I inhabit the hurting,
chest a flock of talismans
at the edge of hunger and praise.
