Contemplation
I open my blinds.
I need to see out into the day.
What is happening?
All seems still in this moment, still gray.
The only bird is in my imagination.
The robins have not yet found the ripe, red berries,
so I remember other years and see them tipsy
on juice.
When Mitchell died, I saw a shooting star.
He had said he would communicate that way.
His favorite color was yellow, and Elaine met a snake,
and wrapped a huge, yellow python around her neck.
My mother honked the car horn when she died,
broke a glass egg.
A female cardinal sat on the feeder, looked in
and watched me with telling eyes.
Now the sun hits the top of the trees.
They straighten and rise.
Like that, death to life, contemplation to activity,
energy grasped like a tail, brought round
to the mouth
and sucked
like a breast. Like that, we are lit like a candle,
allowed to glow, then, blown out, until one day,
the wax is a pool that holds us,
the candles of lifetimes of years, one.
