Tsunami

In which the waves knock me sideways.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

-Ada Limón

I’m not sure I can take it all right now, although I am always seeking to learn from the trees.

Cascading sorrows. Whirling pain. My sweet dog gone, too fast and too soon. My dad’s decline, accelerating. And now my daughter, frighteningly ill and fragile in the hospital (ask me no questions I’ll tell you no lies).

This is all to say I am going quiet for a bit or a while. I am furling. I will catch you on the other side, wherever that other side may be.