Resurrecting Cottonwood

Along the road out of Monticello, NM

It's eight minutes after midnight and I cannot sleep. I crawl out of bed, fumble for the light switch in the study. I expect the dozing dog underfoot but she isn't there. I anticipate my daughter's television might still be humming midnight advertisements, but there is no light from under her white door. It is the eleventh day of the new year and I am too absorbed with significant insignificance to rest. I stay too late at work typing pleas to agencies with money to give to the agency where I work that is running out. I think somehow if I conjugate the perfect 350 word explanation for each question then I can single-handedly right the imbalance. But as I place my ear to the lonely pillow I realize that tonight, instead, I am no longer the crusader. I am thinking instead of a poet I have known for more than thirty years. His wife has just died from breast cancer and his handwritten letter was waiting for me patiently when I arrived home. I am thinking of another man I know who taught me to stand past midnight on concrete floors in a printshop as we adjusted the balance, ink and water, applauding the manifesto pages rolling off our small heroic presses; this man's job will end come the last day of the first month of the new year. Another premature death. Another vehicle buried by the side of the road.

My debut collection of poems has left my hands, left the high wire act between wishes, edits, and strong opinions. It's in others' hands now. Whether my name will be spelled correctly or the type will be straight is no longer my business. I will eventually hold the single dimension rectangle of text revealing my marriage, my child rearing, my flaws and my best romantic intentions to the sky and see if I can see through them to the other side. Fossils will show up there. But this too is of such small consequence to me tonight, this almost wee morning. Cottonwood will persevere.

My husband snores in the adjacent room. My daughter sleeps with two friends in her warm bedroom while the snow blows its invisible white dust on the other side of this night window. I am all too awake in an otherworldliness. I want to call my old friends and whisper "I get it" and "This is what's important, this meditation on you and you and you. You are the shape of what is genuine and caught inside of me." These comings and goings like tears captured in hard honey amber. Petrified wood blocks inherited from grandfathers that act as doorstops and welcome in the spirits and the sadness. Whisper a poem you know to yourself then recite it to another. Applaud. Promise to call.