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, exh...

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 ...

ran into things  His equilibrium subject to the heat and pressure deep    in the earth between crust and core –   and then he dropped  into a Snow White sleep Many fretted the potential shearing off of  his historical edges – but then he woke   his vision once burnt revived  expanded –   diamond tough to make a kaleidoscope catalogue now of his eyes   chronology of roots and flowering trees   Heavenly names that came before to pollinate reveal the thin, scraped soft skin  the surface of catching up of blowing burst dandelion kisses   Tiredness relinquished     Garden dirt turning again in his receptive hands.

As if with a newborn again in the house I rise to guide my elderly mother after her surgery Slow slog from bed to bathroom, and back again  From muscle spasm to dropping  Her hands in resignation, skin pocked like aspen bark Just a few moments of balance brings night breeze  Three cautious steps in the dark before the pain ascends again Up from the tightened grip of her right foot all the way To cut buttock and wilting thigh after    Posterior replacement with titanium hip, and its cry  Unrelenting bedfellow we did not anticipate Her groggy arthritic former piano playing hands    Flutter and press against the skin, as if ironing away grimace She wears a silver and turquoise wristwatch band which she Refuses to take off, measuring sleeplessness I attempt to smooth her taut face, respect spit and clench If she’s dreaming, it’s mumbled nightmare having returned  To temporary recline in a room of pillows and pull up bar   A window where a mo...

My husband leaves each weekday morning at seven. I hear the door to the laundry room open and close. Then sense a gremlin draft  from the adjacent vacated garage. The house goes quiet    for nearly nine hours. He rarely leaves a dirty dish in the sink though  lately  he hasn’t made up the queen-size bed entirely. One corner of  the sheets  pulled back like a welcoming tent flap. Returning, he stacks his most recent hardback library acquisitions  on the blonde end table next to his burgundy wingback chair,  and retrieves the same blue bowl nightly for a dinner salad   which he eats alone. Hungry earlier than I still typing. He walks the hallway with a minor tilt and two clenched fists as if  balanced oars.    This, a recently acquired mannerism. Together we are kitchen dwellers. Gritty lemon pepper granules and orange juice sans pulp. Eggs on the weekend. Subtitles on the television in a r...

                         A car stops and the door opens                                               -   Linda Gregg, Bamboo and A Bird   A car stops and the door opens and sound  escapes. Splash that was not there before.  Into the air, jazzy brush on drum. Lullaby with rouged plum sky.  Snippet of guitar strum, winsome sonata.  Sound propels me to see all the cars parked  under the summer night’s street lights.  Cars with bodies inside sucking smoke and  reaching for one another.  From my vehicle determined closure  as my mother zips her weighty beige  purse shut. Dangling from her left hand.  A single tube of lipstick having fallen  onto the sidewalk alongside us. Its descriptive clink like dropping...

Her ghost comes around.  Makes small popping sounds.  Her death, ricochet of many questions.   Around us, landscape on fire.  I add the Bible to the box in the back of my car,  early plans for potential evacuation.  Scripted inside, tree limbs of births and deaths.  Those relatives I remember  yet the milestones harder to conjure.  We were married in the year of our daughter’s birth.  Hammock between occurrences.   Ledger of access for those left behind.