Poem in Which Gratitude Has Wings

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You can’t stop exclaiming about the canvas

of forest — A mosaic of madronas! you shout

as we walk down a trail we’ve walked down

calendars ago. And the cattails!

Your voice like a child whose been

introduced to feathers, to flight —

the red-winged blackbirds holding

a conversation of marshlands.

I hold your hand though you don’t

know how sadness is landscape

whose roots go deep into my lungs,

an argument from several days ago blooms,

but how can I linger there? You are braiding

starlight with birdsong saying,

Lie down with me in this meadow.

Saying, One day these grasslands will be gone

and I know the distress of the goldenbush

but what I say is, But right now, how lucky

we are, how lucky we are.