Today I
remember
our
home in the Sierras
and the
path we took
to breakfast
at the lodge.
Once,
at daybreak,
I found
your footsteps
in mud.
I traced your gait,
sinking
my boot in your boot
prints,
turning with you
onto
the meadow path.
Your
prints ended at you
kneeled
down, cradling
a
trembling Steller’s Jay
and
cursing the stray—
a
half-breed bobcat, we believed—
that
sat in the duff licking
her
paws. You offered me
the
creature in your palms.
Bird is all you said.
I want you
to describe
twitching
wings against fingers.
Or the stains
of earth you carried
on your
knees the rest of that day.
Or the
clouds of breath—mine,
yours,
the cat’s, even the jay’s,
shuttling
once more a pinch
of
oxygen into its lungs.
I want
you to tell stories
I already
know, slice
your
hand on a knife
in
dishwater, bring
flowerpots
of basil
in from
the rain.
We aren’t
going back
to that
house on Rainbow’s End.
The cat
is probably dead now,
the jay
under a foot of earth
exactly
as we left it.
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