As Mourning Doves Persist

We are tethered to one another with invisible wires. I type the words into a flat screen, “I am relieved” in New Mexico   in my red chair and my sister in California receives them at her kitchen table overlooking redwood trees heavy with their separation someday from solid earth. We each hold a morning cup and relish the sip. I am sensing the past in scent and sensation more than I have before. And wonder if I passed through a tunnel or under a magical lamp post I have circled for 67 years. Now I own an old woman’s nose. First piqued sense is smell. A headiness that is potent but brief. I go back to it throughout the day like a diary left open on the bedside table. Sun hits puddled water. Water spills from table to concrete. Runoff trickles toward the base of tree. I am a child in a wading pool again. In a bucket are prickly weeds that my husband pulled. An age-old slime replicates on the surface, resembles algae along the perimeter of an inland river. My father, fly fisherman, exhibit

Today I barely pick up my slipper feet but amble outside. My cupped hands suggest holler clear across to ridge where cars on the farthest ribbon float like toys or tin angels.  A fence runs its length in front of me, pocked with afterthoughts —                                                 niches carved in the wall.                          Four separate fist indents.  I ache for treasure.              A locket to bear a tender face.   Above my lazy vacation sightline, hunchback mountain  shadowing me since girlhood  with pastels so somber, any licked thumb                                      could smudge.  As if pools of wilting golden leaves,                          an ache in the ancient divets. One dog howls  and then, a country rooster, satisfied. Here where  Saturday is but half started, a metal  fleur de lis  leans against dry muddy.   Land swoops up from mid-horizon and one house pins down  the crest of creosote wave. I imagine  shelf contents in the wall where there are no