Gratitude

 
To begin with, my aneurysm
is unruptured, and it is spring
and the world blooms
and I want to keep blooming,
this old body

that once imagined being a tree,
a tree with a secret
where a child found wisdom
but, of course, I am not a tree,
no leaves turning bright green

as the earth’s axis tilts neither away nor
toward the sun.
And then how the sun’s path
makes its way northward. Aren’t we
all slowly making our way northward?

Isn’t the five point five
millimeter tinderbox in my brain like a star
in the spring sky? Part of Taurus, the Pleiades,
part of the Seven Sisters, making me
an eighth sister?

Today I will walk on the pebbled path
toward the creek
that has partially dried but remains beautiful,
odd-shaped branches leaning, waiting,
against its bank.

*

Broome County, New York

 
The crows are angry.
As a matter of fact, I have
never seen angrier crows.
One screeches. The other, screeches.
Dark feathered fury
at molecules or ghosts
or each other.
It is nearly impossible to understand
anything in this world anymore.
Here the hills offer so much pleasure
you would think they have hands.
I think the first crow screamed:
Leave, this is mine.
The hills were not bothered a bit.
I want to carry them home, the hills
and the humming angel inside them.
Hum along with her.
She wears navy blue
and is thin as an alleyway.

***

(Featured image from Pexels)