monday, august 19, 2019
it was damn near a hundred again today
over at the airport where they measure
a little cooler here on the edge of things
the river is running low, like it's august in fact
as well as by date
so like you expect,
the grass turns gray-brown and gold in the sun
but all told it's been a green year in colorado
the way the locals seem to remember their childhoods:
thunderstorms in the summer afternoon,
big rains and little ones
the orb weavers, growing fat now, build outsized
webs on what will hold still long enough — my bike,
the trashcan by the corner of the house,
the bucket hanging on my garden fence
bees hum where i've let the herbs go to flower
i wonder if some of them fly home to the hive
in the cracked brick walls
of the first house i lived in here
it's fourteen years this month
or a couple of lifetimes depending on how you count
in the mountains, my niece is learning to crawl
while out on the plains my family waits to bury
my great aunt, gone at 95, who had already seen
i can't begin to guess how many lifetimes
by the year i was born
everything is always happening
all at once
and i'm not sure i can tell any more
all the joy from the grief
or the longing from the gratitude