Clues
So many clues I have missed along the way that a scent of something other than my own motion could have detected and woven into a gossamer scaffolding. What freshness in a pause left paused, a sighting of loveliness left to itself, a ray of light allowed to caress without comment, a breath of tender movement gone unwashed by thought? These are losses that I mourn with a start when I am here long enough to ask more of time than that it move and flatten all in its path.
Gardening
I had forgotten that I was a gardener until we bought a house with three yards— two for keeping up appearances and one to legitimately neglect. Or at least that’s what the previous owner told me as he stood staring at the far-away sun-dappled plot: “I just let this go back here,” he said. “You don’t need to do a thing, and it never needs mowing.” And that’s just what I did the first few years until half-starved for Earth’s intimacy I rediscovered what can be grown in hard clay if the need arises—my only option to stand still and work with my hands close to my heart.
A Tree Explains What It Does
Sift wind, slicing it to make it sing under the surface, but coming from around the base of my trunk, where dried rivers of bark carve out what can be heard only if you honour me by sitting beneath my branches and sharp-edged leaves until you are quiet enough to listen to what the rings inside me guard from year to year.
Stephanie Unger