smells of dirt, wet leaves, a water snake’s tongue.
The blue jay has something important to say.
I sit quietly, wait for the fern to unfurl.
What I want to say is purple, yellow, white:
a bee hovers near it, a cricket mostly agrees.
The pond is a bathtub for my dusty mind,
there is food here for both me and the sedges,
this place where the arrowhead, at any moment,
will begin to speak, where the orchids will answer
with a bearded nod. The frond of a giant fig
crashed onto the path like a tropical bird. Digging,
we found layers of the broken, the smallest pieces
of ourselves, the edges of who we once were.
–
Martha Silano’s newest collection is Gravity Assist, forthcoming from Saturnalia Books in March 2019. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Bellevue College.