Poems from in between

You sit on the stump of the old willow
where last stood a luxurious swaying,
deep shade for hot summer days.

Sun falls bright upon your head,
your joints ache from prayer
or thought or long years

of passive watch over this small yard,
the squirrels that make their home
in the stretches of the elm,

the myriad birds flicking water
in the fountain. You rest,
I toil —

I remove weedy barriers
to your eyes,
open vistas for mine.

We dwell upon one another,
me in my creation,
you in yours.

I will buy for you
a cedar box, red,

fragrant when rain falls,
broad and steady,

and plant it
near the crocuses and the daffodils

that were tossed among fresh sprouts
of day lilies, and in time,

that will sleep under the vigils
of June’s deep clematis

and our red-then-green-
then-red-again maple.

And upon it
you will wait and pray,

your flowered necklace
never wilting, your hennaed hand

forgiving each day
its storms, its whips

of wind, its white cold,
its dying, its deformities,

its birthing, its longing
that swirls on end around you.