even when heat and Santa Ana
winds trip fire-watch apps,
ground squirrels lay splayed
on tiled stoops, orange firestick
with their pleading fingers
reach upwards to a cloudless sky,
winds blow so hard
as if trying to resuscitate
buckwheat and sage,
i can still make out the slender
wild oat and its ripening gold,
the last of the lavender,
its scent finding its way
through the pause.
i must stop calling the raven
and barn owl, mine,
stop nursing dried milkweed
as if i’d just given birth,
professing my sorrows
to songbirds. so on mornings
like these when all that’s left
are remnants of fledgling wings,
i won’t wonder if they left
behind a night full of worry,
only imagine bobcat and coyote
consumed their flight,
escaped the impermanence
of all that’s still gleaming.
–
Tammy Greenwood is a Louisiana native residing in California. Poet and printmaker, she is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work appears in Rattle, Door is a Jar, ONE ART, Rust & Moth, Orange Blossom Review, San Pedro River Review, Emerge Literary Journal, FERAL, and elsewhere.