Because so many can’t write about the jasmine blooming in the flowerpot this morning.
Because they can’t see the sun rise over a window box of mint or go looking in the pantry for coffee and dried figs.
The blood is still wet on bowling shoes, on camouflage book bags, and patches of dried earth under the olive trees.
There are people who will never know the peace of a red-bud breaking open or the helplessness of roses drying in a neighbor’s yard.
But if a flower fights for anything It’s only for the right to live, in a forest or field Where it will feed dragonflies and pollinate more of itself.
Tigerlily spreading its yellow self, swallowtail landing On a patch of purple lantana. Because nature is not a distraction, but an instruction.
Rivers feed oceans. Dying logs feed grubs who recreate the soil. The soft liver of any dying animal
responds to its collapse by giving back whatever it had. The only response to violence is to throw your body as deep as you can
into the darkness, until something takes hold of you, and uses your dying sorrow to bloom.
*
One Day A Bird
Ate the last hate in your heart. Plucked it out like an oily black sunflower seed and flew away. You went for a walk in your neighborhood, past the church That wasn’t yours, past the signs for political candidates You didn’t much care for. You didn’t mind. There was really no time anymore to be angry at your last lover Or the one before that. Or to send bad feelings to the mayor of your city, Or the governor of your state. You liked this feeling of being cloudlike and unencumbered. You learned to like your neighbors, Even the ones who flicked cigarette butts on their lawn. And the woman at the grocery store who never smiles at you. Even the fences didn’t bother you anymore. They were ugly, yes, But they belonged to someone hungry, someone who liked being warm on cold nights and drinking hard-cider and the feel of clothes out of the laundry machine. Everyone, you realize, is the same when they are watching YouTube videos of a cat, or sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting for news. You had been angry before, at all the people who wouldn’t worship your thoughts, or pray to your private wishes. But that was before. Before that bird came and plucked the last hatred out of your heart. And where was it now, you wondered? As you stared at the sky, waiting for it to circle back and land on the ugly, ugly house that once had been a collection of trees and now was somebody’s home.
*
Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, Blue Mesa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Five South, Hunger Mountain, Mid-America Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle, TinderBox and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012, 2020, and 2021 nomination for a Pushcart. Her first manuscript, “Pleasures of the Bear” was a finalist for prizes from both Moon City Press and Glass Lyre Press. It was published by Pine Row Press under the title When the Moon Had Antlers in 2023. Find her at www.thepoetrysalon.com.
