Mother's Day

Home now, with a dog who is so nervous that I think she’s given me a bellyache. I brought her to trim her fat and force myself to get out each day instead of two times a week. Maybe—probably—to avoid poetry for a while, too.

Being home II from home I is strange. I went to all the old places.

Every curve along that creek (despite two different dogs on tangled leashes, new trail networks, some dead ends)? Feels the same. The old haunts. The new takes on its smell.

That house across the way? Razed. The shop? Shut. The restaurants are different or moved or closed. And I’m no longer allowed to hike down and skip rocks or kick off my shoes and stand behind the falls. The water’s flowing, but the trees are leaning too hard and the rock’s shaving away these days.

I'm wondering a lot about the woman I've been behind so many different walls.

I understand morning here. The trails along the shore will be the same tomorrow as they were last week. I’ll scale the same rocks and stop in all the same places to breathe, to see, to take in what I’m already missing of this place.

Maybe I said fat as an excuse. Maybe she's here for me. I need to to be grounded--to move and stay still at the same time.

Maybe I'm cryptic with purpose. I don't mean to be, but I'm speaking to the dead.

Let’s say that dead means nothing more than not here right now.

I’m tired of words. Under my desk, she sleeps.