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On our morning walk,

two hawks,

It’s hard to write poems
in the oil change bay,
White Stripes on the radio,
thin and grubby men
with their hands deep
in your engine,
the sounds of cars
rolling by behind you.
I wonder things about them,
like how much they get paid
to go in and out
of this pit in the floor every day,
about the one drinking
Monster Energy
at eight o’clock in the morning,
his black-stained fingers
slowly dipping a breadstick
into pizza sauce
as he leans under the hood.
“It’s hard to have a conversation like this,”
my husband says,
“Shhh!” I say,
“I’m writing a poem about it.”
We affix the sticker
to our windshield
and slowly roll back
out onto the street,
shafts of sunlight
cracking through
the clouds to illuminate
the way forward.

#30DaysofGoddess happens everywhere, even at the Jiffy Lube, with a prayerbook on your lap. The prompt on this day was “Illuminate.”

It is now that the hydrangeas 

are in bloom, 

There is a red-winged blackbird
with only one foot
that comes to our bird feeder.
It balances precariously,
small stump churning the air,
as it selects its seeds.
There are flowers
on the mulberry trees
and bees in the raspberries
and we saw three
monarch butterflies
in the field
and watched an oriole
who hit the window
manage to fly again.
There is a pair of cardinals
who visit the bird feeder too,
they sit together
with their shoulders touching
and sometimes tenderly
choosing seeds and putting them
into one another's beaks
reminding me of how
I watched my great uncle's hand
softly caress
my great aunt’s back
one afternoon
at the park in the rain.
Twenty-seven years ago today,
I went on a first date
with the man I married.
It was a last first date
for both of us
and here we are now,
watching those two cardinals
feed each other seeds,
knowing how they feel.
These things
give me hope.

It was mist this morning
that lured me away,
straight out of bed and into the trees
to see the glow lifting
from the valley and sliding through
the rising sun,
particles of water vapor
drifting sideways through the air
so that it looks like the woods
are breathing.
I almost think I hear the fairies
of the land whispering
as the rays of sunshine
lay down enchanted paths
between tree trunks,
unmapped lines of discovery
that are only revealed
with the light is just so
and a crow zips silently by
carrying something mysterious
in its beak.
I see why we are warned about the mist,
pathways that are shrouded and uncertain.
After all, if you step into the mist
how will you know
what to buy or what to feel
bad about.
How can anyone capture
and sell your attention
if you’ve reclaimed it
and let it settle into the mist
instead of into a screen.
If you are focused
instead of fractured,
if you are no longer listening
to how it has to be,
or what to think,
or where to look,
or what to buy,
perhaps it is you
who becomes dangerous,
free as you now are
to slip away
into the mist,
into the real and pulsing
world,
breath from cedar trunks
rising up to meet you
where you are.