POEMS

Unknowing

A few weeks from now we will move from here
To the new place we have chosen.
I will leave this patio, grey stone, red brick and green
 
Today I do not know what I will know soon
How much this house will sell for; when moving day will be
Who will live here next
I wonder how my morning solitary times will be
As we learn to live in our new place

 
Years ago, climbing Mount Olympia
We found ourselves surrounded
In thick fog.  All that we could see
Was the path under our feet
And so we took the next step, and the next, hoping
That through the clouds, we’d come
To a sunlit view:  white mountains, blue valleys
Wildflowers blooming purple pink.
But we could not know what we would see
Coming to that high place.
 

I lost my companions for awhile, as the fog dropped.
They kept on striding, intent on the summit
But I slowed down
My steps took me only as far ahead as I could see.
Slowing, my mist-filled eyes began to see
What I might have missed, going faster:
By the side of the path, intense blue of mountain aster
Fire of devil’s paintbrush
And tiny grey-green lichens, hanging on.
 

And so I pause now, at my fifty-ninth year
With mist-filled eyes
To gaze at where I am:  grey stone, brick wall
The pink geranium where the hummingbirds have come
Chrysanthemums, burnt orange, on the patio wall
And the surrounding green that has been my home.
Not knowing what the move will make of me
When I come to our new place.

(from Good Places (2017)