Astonished

after Georgia O’Keeffe and Mary Oliver

we almost miss the yellow-bellied sapsucker beak-deep
into the weeping trunk,
its back blending in with the glisten. & the cardinals,
her mouth full of twigs and his of song,
making their way home branch-to-branch. wild rabbit lazing in the backyard sun beam,
squirrels leaning long into the air
& reaching for the tree’s buds.

used to be i'd listen for the rustling
out of the oregon grape or the huckleberry bushes
to know the spotted towhee was there, its amber eye embered.
or the slap of scales on water to know a fish had jumped.

some evenings, the crows went wild & we knew there was an eagle
whose eyes had also seen the fish & whose yellow claws
itched for them.

others, the heron—
whose body was the color of very early morning
—watched us, too,
from high in a tree before taking to the water,
its legs thin as wire.

you get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare
and mine is this: to have felt the seaweed along my feet and belly.
to have seen the clams breathing
through their holes in the sand.
to know the yellowgreen of birch leaves lit
in summer up north, to have rubbed the blue bloom from a plum
to reveal the purple & to have bit to the pit to reveal the wetgold of its flesh.
to know the smell of blueberry picking in august.
to have laid down in the moss in the quinault rainforest.
to have spotted the sapsucker

& to have gone back
to the same tree each day to wait and wait and wait
in the hopes we might see him again.





*The italicized line is a quote from Georgia O’Keeffe.

Black Abstraction (1927)

after Georgia O’Keeffe

i was once an animal small enough to fit in the pinecone
small enough to fit in the evergreen needle
a bluegrey body, a verdant body. i was once so small
i was the entire ocean / the tide-pooled coast / the mountain
and every animal sleeping along its back.
i was the coltsfoot the wakerobin the golden violet—
whole blankets of them, shrouding the lichen—
and i was the trillium, fit right onto the point of each petal
slept curled under the curve of the dark leaves
where i dreamed i was the moss reaching its arms up to the sky.

i grew without light in my body, rather sipped it
straight in through my leaves, filtered through the crown-shy overstory
& through the darkness of the womb. i was once the color
of a baby bird’s throat backlit and wide, i was once in an egg
and had no name, i was once a dream or a mote or an atom
carried on a bluegreen wave or in the grey grey sky or through a clicked shutter
on a humming machine where my eye shone black on a backlit screen.

i was the fine hair on a raspberry, or perhaps that was my mother & her mother—
fruits that fruited me. when i'd sleep in the full summer sun
i ripened. so small i was sweet, so small i was also the thorn. i was once an animal
dug straight from the sand, wet & wailing. i was once an animal found cupped
in an old tree, its sap white-laced down its back.