No matter the shape of things, you are much missed
       

                The spring heron stands tall on stones,
an early morning dealer of the good stuff,
a bone-soothe from an inside pocket. He's got
a rattle stop, a throat scuffle cough-drop.
                From the room inside, grey mountains
stubborn as a steely cough, stare a ridged
unrelenting stoop of an unapproving brow.
Mother nature's dirty look.
                The sun tips up its brim, eye-bright,
the mountain crests under new light.
Grain spills on the tracks for the spring bear
called, The Boss. Magpies glitter over ice,
sky-oil-slick as untapped pipelines.
                This stifling monochrome.
I miss the bowlegged surety of corn-flowered auburn
fields of orange sunsets, and yesterday morning, certain
of the vivid future.
                In Hindi, there's a legend of a sparrow who erodes
a mountain by dragging a silk scarf across its peak
for one-hundred million years. I think of you, us.
                Nothing solid can withstand
this sort of relentlessness.

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Copyright © 2021 Micheline Maylor All rights reserved
from The Bad Wife
University of Alberta Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission