Woken in the blue hours, starlings dive and swirl
in the dark. I grind coffee, carry it to the garden,
count the hours back to you. Too many and too
few. Summers you’d retreat to the den
for August baseball, the mature cedar and
Douglas fir darkening to deep shade at dusk.
Night games and their holy liturgy. Windups
and changeups, the living box score. Base
hits and pine tar, inside heat and extra innings.
Now I worry you’re keeping vigil over the smoking
tree line. Knowing when the roar of fire gets close
it’s time to go. Decades those trees kept counsel,
told you when wind was coming, or snow. I like
to think on stark forest nights when you were alone,
you were not alone, that they brought news of
bear cubs, of what newts cared to say,
how a dream could grow in the gap between
the forest floor and the first run of branches,
make of a river and its brambles a home, if you
learned to live without taking alone. So many offerings
are new requests. A mistake I nearly made that cold
fall. We’d finished our walk and tuned in to the
Yankees game, I wanted to reach out, grab
your hand so you knew my gratitude, instead I heard
a voice in the warm inner air. It said, Relax, we’re
speaking by simply sitting here.