My Wilderness by Maxine Scates

Author:Maxine Scates [Scates, Maxine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780822988366
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

III.

Nature

The huge maple, the one where the boys

pretended to hide a baby in the hollow of its trunk,

my dog nosing the blanket for one terrible moment

before it held nothing, where the older kids

used to swing from its branches,

has split in the storm,

one huge wing fallen, leaving the long rawness

of a wound. So many branches

still on the ground, the cherry promising each blossom

until the warm days come, until each bud

withers though this is nature which does not

remember itself unless you count the red-tailed hawk

standing by the roadway morning after morning

until someone takes the body of its wing-shattered

mate away, or listen to the jays shrieking,

swooping low at the cat after

he killed their fledgling. Did the birds miss

the fallen branches when they returned? I didn’t hear

them for days until I heard the wrens singing, each note

like water falling over stones as I climbed over

a downed tree on my morning walk.

Truth is, I heard the words that praised me

then sent me on my way, meaning I want something

I cannot have, something I fear

I’ll never have, and if, and if I don’t? Truth is,

I dreamed a line of mourners waiting to climb

several flights. I could see those inside climbing

to the second then third floors to a very small room

holding the coffin, and when I asked if

this was the right place I already knew it was

and did not want to be there,

wanting instead, or so it seems, to mourn the dead

I never knew, sorry for all the times I was not listening

when my mother told the stories told to her. Why

is it only now I am so sorry when they

have been dead all these years? How is it

I’m pulling weeds out where the roses bloomed,

someone saying Make sure you pull them up

by their roots? How is it the peaches, dimpled, rosy,

juice spilling from their loosened stems,

are still falling overripe from the neighbor’s tree,

thudding one by one onto the earth

on our side of the fence where the flies are gathering

to teach their lessons about slow rot and decay?

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