After I studied a stone, after I spotted an eagle in a madrone,

I chose the junco in the salal, the lichen in the crotch

of a tree rather than scrolling my phone.

Down my street, there’s a stump that reminds me of an octopus,

or is it a many-legged human, or is it just a tree that,

for whatever reason, decided it needed

several trunks? I thought about massaging my earlobes to stimulate

my vagus nerve while God and I had a thumb war.

Who do you think won? Then I said hello

to a hellebore blooming through snow. Nothing grows younger,

not the ferns nor the mosses, nothing is younger-ing,

but it doesn’t make my eyebrows ache,

doesn’t mean I won’t have a pinwheel bialy tomorrow

at my favorite coffee shop. Whenever it feels like it,

the Earth could heave and quake:

right now, tomorrow, in 556 years. I think of that poet who asked

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Well, eat Swiss cheese, go see the twelve apostle

herons at their very urban rookery, sink my teeth

into orange-cranberry bread, look closely

at a goldeneye, see if I can spot,

on its face, its tell-tale Nike swoosh. In this one precious life,

the roof needs its moss and the flour must have its yeast,

and with my ghosts I’m as rich as a slug

who adores its slime. It’s sad about the garbage gyre,

but then there are drunken bees (please don’t spray

the dandelions) and tambourines, the chance,

every day, to take a polar plunge. I’m sad, and I’m not sad,

you know what I mean? Stunned by the full moon

that follows me from Tacoma to home.