of the forest back to life.

How lightly is the mortal set aside, laughing.
How little is made of it to the anxious inquiry:
"It was a tree branch in the dark," I say,
"but I protected my eye with my face."
Hence this little T-shaped rent, see, just under
my right eye, already sealed and healing.

I do not speak of how I was running full out
in the dark, because I thought I knew my way.
I do not describe the cedar twig, a good finger's
width, snapped off and worn by time as smooth
as a lance, as the shaft of an arrow.
I do not mention the moment of impact,

the bright white flash I saw in the lightless dusk.
The fall to my knees as my hand fluttered up,
a protective impulse come far too late; how
when it came back down it had inexplicably
acquired a contact lens, and a thick drizzle
of blood.  I do not try to evoke for them that

instant, when I thought the worst had happened.
I do not recount that it will not be until an hour
later, already with friends and making light of my
misfortune, that my imagination will conjure up
even worse than that worst.  Of how easily
that spike might have been hanging there for years

waiting for me to come along and impale myself
on it, to run at it and drive it deep into my brain.

Instead, every time I'm asked, I tell the same little
joke. And every time tragedy unravels, as the
concerned countenance of each friend transforms
suddenly into laughter, like magic.

The rest stop is on a kind of mesa, perched between
the twin canyons of the three-lane interstate. To get there
we enter an enclosed bridge/corridor from the parking lot
on our side, east-bound. The windows look down over

the traffic passing under us, and we play a game it turns out
both of us made up when younger -- can you cross
the bridge without getting "hit"? Perhaps everyone plays
this game. "Oh no, an 18-wheeler, walk faster--"

It's a close call. "We made it!" "Just barely!"
We've played it enough to know that sometimes
there are just too many, no matter what you do.
But once set in the imagination, you can't not play,

it seems. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you don't;
sometimes it's easy, sometimes exhilaratingly close. You
never know. For my brother, for Davey, who always loved
a game as much as the next person, maybe more -- no,
definitely more -- the traffic was heavy, heavy, heavy.

The damp May evening after the rain
is hedged in with a woven wall of sound
as impenetrable as the black edge of the woods
going down the slope to the marsh.

The peepers have come in their hundreds,
or their thousands. Who can tell?
The quavers and squeaks and beeps blend
seamlessly, unwavering. Past midnight, past dawn.

It is a 24-hour nightclub down there, young bodies
singing, pulsing, looking for the right signs:
a total hook-up culture. They are the original
Daft Punk, up all night to get lucky.

Trying to have a quiet lunch in the staff room,
my attention keeps being drawn from my reading
to the conversation of the pompous, self-appointed
film aficionado, although "conversation" would imply
that his counterpart is getting a word in edgewise.
For some reason he is enthusiastically listing all the
exploitation film genres he can think of, but when he gets to
"nunsploitation" I know it's time to get out of here,
and fast.

I have not slept well. Awake at 4,
I’m too cold to go back to sleep,
and too easily wakened completely
to get up and find my flannel pajamas
and then go back to sleep. Catch-22.

I finally give in at 5 and get up, begrudging everything:
cold, the coming day, wakefulness, the world.
In the stove I lay logs on last night’s coals,
not bothering with tinder; a trickle of smoke
and I desert it to catch flame on its own.

I grumpily measure out water for the morning’s porridge,
two cups, and turn on the electric range, a practice
so rote I could do it in my sleep. Then,
switching off the kitchen lights, I reward myself
by lying on the couch until the water boils.

It’s a sort of lie, of course, a momentary
make-believe that I could go back to sleep.
But the couch is soft, and so is the dark,
and I listen as over in the kitchen the range
ticks into a dully glowing heat

while on my other side the fire comes alive,
a cracking, flickering orange creeping through
the stove door I left ajar to give it air.
And then, from nowhere in the dark room
my little cat appears upon my chest

and begins purring at once, her delicate paws
kneading and unclenching on the fabric
of my robe, her head pushed into the hand
that gropes blindly toward her, her little fire
delighting in all that is right in the world.

                           1.
Our bird feeder is currently empty,
and one of the red squirrels who regularly
swipes seeds from it now sits atop the
snowy woodpile on its haunches, unmoving.

From our window we can see its front paws
tucked together across its middle,
no doubt to stay warm while it keeps
its inscrutable watch on the world,

but from here this gives the impression
of nothing so much as that of a monk,
rufous cowl tucked close against the wind,
hands folded in contemplation,

bushy tail straight up against its back.
I wonder aloud what this squirrel monk
might have in common with its fraternal order
of chipmunks, when K. suggests

                           2.
its meditation could be on the revelation
to Julian of Norwich in which she saw
all creation as a mere hazelnut, so tiny
she was amazed it could exist at all,

expecting “that because of its littleness
it would suddenly have fallen into nothing.”
After all, she lived through the Black Plague,
which laid waste to half of Norwich.

In her time too was the Papal Schism, the
Hundred Years’ War, and the Peasants’ Revolt.
What further breath of fate would it seem to need
for the world to fall into nothing?

Yet she wrote of a God not of wrath
but compassion, of Jesus the mother,
that sin is but a step in coming to God,
that humanity is not evil, only ignorant.

                            3.
We’re still amazed by such thoughts
some 600 years later. But perhaps the squirrels
have always understood: the world their hazelnut,
the world in which they might at any time

fall all at once into nothing. Julian heard
in her vision, “It lasts and shall last forever,
for God loves it. All things have being by
the love of God.” Honestly, what sort of net is that

in this high wire dance of history and predation,
of making and unmaking, of plagues and wars
and weasels and hawks? Enough to get me up
and out into the cold, to refill our feeder with tiny seeds.

for kaph

I always check the pockets of our shirts and pants
before I give them over to the washer
(since between us we’ve decorated I don’t know
how many laundries with our forgotten
kleenex) and more often than not these days
I find in yours the odd half-dozen
sunflower seeds, the loose change of your
forest rambles, where you always take enough
to pause from time to time, hand held out,
for any congregated chickadees to come
alight upon your hand and pluck a daring
snack from off your palm. The cagey ones
just hover and zip off, but others perch
and look around, showing off their boldness.

I always make sure I get them all—not
wanting to waste good seed—before I finish
with the weekly chore. Then, gathering
my take, I scatter them outdoors for whatever
may find and need them. And now I come
to write this down, I wonder if the next time
you are in the woods and fishing for a last
seed somewhere for a persistent hungry
chickadee, if you will think of me, doing laundry,
in much the same way as I think of you
while doing it. Keep looking, I assure you,
there’s almost always still a few more left
for a tiny heart aloft on dainty wings.