there is a pause
at the final turning
of November,
before the season
firmly closes,
that may be entered
if the juncture
between foot and path
is timed just so
there stillness rests
in cool absolute –
a mantle of calm,
a lesson in breath
© Sarah Whiteley
that silver morning at Shi Shi,
the chill we rose to a mere shade
of the deeper cold to come
we’d had visitors in the night,
our tents encircled by prints –
two sets surveying our strangeness
then breaking away to wander
to the edge of the sea,
twining in close loops together
we followed with our coffee
trailing steam from our mugs –
careful not to efface the evidence
© Sarah Whiteley
I do not count them, the trees –
instead, I walk into them
as one does into sunlight
or into unexpected joy
along the needle-softened path
here I am most at home –
drifting like birdsong
beneath and between
the glad immeasurable
© Sarah Whiteley
I wake before the wrens
so that I can hike
alone up the rise
and watch the gold
of new light arrive
and each time
there is a pleasure
in its crunching
beneath my feet like
bright, brittle ice
© 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
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
the wind and I walked,
and let the sun sleep in
just a few minutes more,
– just this once –
so that we might hear
our stray-dog thoughts
before the interrupting
layers of birdsong
© Sarah Whiteley
they’ve set traps for the rats –
one would think who cares?
except that I’ve seen the mother
coax her young in clambering
up the long patience of her tail
to reach the seed in the feeder
long after the evening’s last birds
have flown to their repose
down the street, they’ve shot the coyote,
and are calling it mercy –
one might say so what?
except that she tracked the rats
and carried them back with her
into the deep green bulwark
at the densest edge of the park
where her soft-nosed pups wait
they’ve placed a sign around the corner
and one might think it benign –
until the hard hats descend
with their chainsaws and chippers,
to fell and to sunder the cedar
whose rings will mark an age
that far surpasses this city
and glibly name it progress
© Sarah Whiteley
ebbtide 