What is saving me
How the tracks of turkey
in the talcum dust
show the joints of his middle toe
as if a piece of rebar
went for a walk.
I’m two-syllable
tired of the chaos―
so I take my own hand,
like a toddler,
bend low to the ground,
see the spider take cover
in the tiny cap of an acorn.
I want to crawl in with her,
to share
her makeshift cave,
her sheltered outlook.
To soften towards the world,
I watch an armadillo plow
for bugs in the powdered earth.
Notice her nose, white with age and industry,
wonder the sad story
of that round hole in her left ear.
*
Living by Ear
One May midnight, a million wings overhead stirred the air, flowing south. Nearby the aching volta of loon cry. Camp in the desert, the sound of no sound. The whistle of mourning dove wings. A nighttime prayer of calling owls. The sharp retort of buck fight, skirmish after skirmish. Black vultures soft wingbeats sound like the shake of a loose-skinned hound. Their cousins, turkey vultures, glide on thermals in utter silence. Porcupines purr in the trees after dark. Carolina wren stakes his claim with a stuttering sound like a thumb running down a comb.
at dawn the moon set
in the lap of attention
a shard of opal
*
Knowing that this can’t go on forever
We joke It’s datenight day
Mostly Saturdays, taking turns.
Plan, shop, pick a theme, type a menu,
add a relevant soundtrack.
Our house aromatic for hours.
No TV. No phone. Shower. Dress up a bit.
Take each other’s pulse.
Weekly report: Sightings of roadrunner, coachwhip, brushfire.
What made us laugh: a back and forth with raven,
the fox’s post-nap yoga. Shared worries: fragile democracy,
ethnic cleansing of the neighborhood, cruelty and
shocking depravities. How to cope or how we’re not.
Perhaps a dance: one swing, one slow.
Then leaning against each other
in front of the fire, its own prolonged sunset.
Listening on the porch for owls, or
turkeys laughing on their way to roost.
Ask fresh questions.
I share where to toss my ashes,
not there, the next rock over.
You share I want to go first and fast.
We reach for each other’s hand―
because we can―
hoping to brake the speed of time.
~ title from Jason Isbell’s “When We Were Vampires”
*
Lucy Griffith lives beside the Guadalupe River near Comfort, Texas. As a retired psychologist, she explored the imagined life of the Burro Lady of West Texas in her debut collection, We Make a Tiny Herd, earning both the Wrangler and Willa Prizes. Her second collection, Wingbeat Atlas, pairs her poems with images by wildlife photographer Ken Butler, to celebrate our citizens of the sky. The Place the Spiders Waved, a memoir in verse, was a Willa Finalist. She’s been a Bread Loaf scholar, a Certified Master Naturalist and is known to stare at the river for long periods of time.