six cats
eight hands
so we measure

twelve feet
the length of our lives
and all things we collect

The storm has blown through
after rolling over us for two days. 
It has left a soft bitterness 
to be savored tenderly 
and then released
as we can. 

I witness a tree unleaf
and my heart is softened 
knowing it will releaf next spring.

But there is no softening 
watching you unleaf,
no such imagined spring 
to keep me company
in the heart of winter,

no such certainty in time frame,
no such pattern in your fall,
no part a burden to share
even with you
in this loneliest time.

It was in the clouds
in bright patches against black sky.
And as my eyes followed it,
the sloped branches of the pine lit up
and cast a shadow on the dried grass.

How could I have lived so long,
awoken so many nights
and not understood what the poets say --
that moonlight makes them howl,
brings clarity when they least expect it,
often in a pounding moan?

Leaves begin to shiver
as if the rain has come already.

The branches toss -- worried,
varied, attentive,

trying to anticipate --
nothing, no rain yet.

A timeless hush now falls 
while the wind turns 

its attention elsewhere, 
and we indeed hold our breath 

with the trees,
wait upon wait

for the rain to pour down
and wash us all.

It is there when I wake up,
that deep ache in the narrow of my shoulders 
from changing a flat tire that night in the rain, 
angry at him, at myself.

Most days, it is buried so deep
it is not perceptible. 
But today, the pain is in every moving breath. 

This is the last of what he left me,
when he finally marched out 
to his other war.

In the decades since,
in the meandering of life’s bountiful progressions
all of the bruisings have been mended, 

save this one -- my pierced tissue
calls to me every other blue moon,
right here, beneath my right shoulder blade.

I roll over in bed 
and again teach myself, am kindly taught, 
I am sure not for the last time, 
how to heal.