I have not named
what it is I am grieving –
letting go becomes
unfeasible in such a state
perhaps it is simply
for a space which carries
both the gravity
and lightness of leaving
a place where inhaling
and exhaling
become something other
than separate acts –
disparate sides
of the same smooth stone,
palmed for the easy comfort
of its rounded weight
© Sarah Whiteley
in the shadow of the butte –
the river, its stones,
the ghost-shells of
two crickets, and
a fly breaking
the surface
of a rill,
but never
its song
© Sarah Whiteley
lately I have been
preoccupied with ghosts –
with the dust that
follows me from old roads
without wind, three pines
lean hard on a sister and groan –
the sound finds me
even after they fall
© Sarah Whiteley
this morning, I am the attendee
of another crow funeral
the fourth such curated cacophony
close followed by hushful reverence
yet this is only something eventual
finally becoming true
while elsewhere, the crickets
rasp hymns to the rain
© Sarah Whiteley
Anyone who has followed this poetry blog for any length of time knows that I have been accepted by a very special family of crows. For the past 9 years, they have been clownish companions who visit me on the porch, caw through my window to get my attention, introduce their young to me, and tag along on walks with the dogs. I have had to warn any dog sitters coming in that the crows recognize my dogs and will want to walk with them even when I’m not there. I have been entertained, enchanted, and delighted by them – even when they steal my lighter and drop chicken bones on my head (I think that’s a gift?).
This morning the family lost one of this year’s young – hit by a car while I was on my way to work. This is the fourth crow funeral I have witnessed, but the first I have seen from start to finish. While I would have much preferred to have a different start to my Friday, it at the very least serves as a reminder that animals are as capable of close connection and of mourning as we are.
© Sarah Whiteley
you speak of grasshoppers,
and fireflies, that sharp scent
of hard and sudden rains –
all the things that do not
set their blessings here,
or rarely do anyway
the impossibility of elsewhere
is no longer a vague notion –
the truth of it rests on my chest –
the spiny, black hull
of a horse chestnut dropped
on a damp and chill morning
© Sarah Whiteley
all night, the rats scatter
from the ivy under the porch –
warm-furred realizations of words
like skitter, like dart
all but the one, who watches
from the narrow tract of light
between parked cars, as I wipe
the dampness from my beer
and speak again of leaving
© Sarah Whiteley
