But Still the Trout Lilies

(for K.D.)

I’ve only ever known you dying,
like the world you love so much —
the forest of your knowing
turning to ash. The bison,
the red wolf, the spotted turtle.
You. But still the trout lilies

push up through the mat of winter,
through the sodden mesh
of doctors’ appointments
where your small declines and
holdings on are measured —
incremental losses and delights.

I’ve only ever known you dying. No,
I know you living. Here, you greet me,
hat askew, crooked smile lighting up
the screen and I can hear the peepers
in your pond, a contrapuntal song

of life, your laughter a tremolo of lodgepole
pine seeds dispersing through flames.

*

Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada). Thanks to Firefly Creative, Merritt Writers, and not-the-rodeo poets, she has work published/forthcoming in Event, Gone Lawn, One Art, Pinhole, Rust & Moth, SWWIM, and The New Quarterly.