The wind has come up  
and now there is a cloud behind the mountain.   
How many times did she tell me the story   
of my birth? The story ended when she’d say,  
and that was the happiest day of my life, and  
I’d feel a little sad because I’d had no child  
and would never have a day like hers. Sometimes,  
I can see the river bottom and its glitter  
of stones. Then a fish leaps in sunlight rippling  
the surface. Sometimes, I listen to the birds,  
our seers, the pileated always laughing. I’ve read  
the dead in dreams are never dead,  
and yes, it is their aliveness that is reassuring,  
their going on even as they leave us here. Just now  
the shadow of wings, and a far-off child’s voice  
shouting  Hey, Mom.

All our windows open, steady drizzle on the kudzu’s 
broad backs, birds making their music like this isn’t North 
Carolina, but a tropical rainforest, and we’re somewhere 
deep in the palms and vines. But it’s our own ferns and fiddleheads, 
evergreens and sugar maples, trillium blooming, or on the verge, 
for no one in particular, for everyone in particular, as if to say, 
Go on, enjoy it. Rain, flowers, time on earth. The apple I  
hand-picked at the market. Braiding my friend’s hair, silver  
in my fingers, how I tie a tiny bow gently at the end 
just as the sun comes out. I want to believe this is true power, that 
kindness is the only weapon worth wielding, and I wield it, 
land blow after blow to my enemies, without mercy. 
Mercy. Bring the wine. Set the table for surprise guests.  
No matter the plates don’t match and we’ve run out of chairs, 
only that there is bread and laughter, enough to go around. 
Parades, in spite of—Pride, in spite of—Please, someone answer all my 
questions about hummingbirds and the little futures we are 
reaching for, the ones rising above the horizon right before our eyes,  
such intoxicating visions, our truest selves, with nothing to hide. Go on. 
Trust the child standing barefoot in the rain, her face turned 
up to the sky. Trust that crescendo building in your chest is your 
voice, singing what you need to hear, the stone-heavy echo 
welled from darkest springs. Go ahead. Open the door. No one can 
explain how to love the world. It doesn’t happen all at once. But 
you can start here. Tonight, with yourself. Someone near you. Let it go 
zigzagging town to town. Look, there. It’s already coming back around.

You like to fight. You desire sweat  
and snap of bicep,  
thick resource of thighbone,  
shouldering aside obstacles. 
You like to thrust your way in and find 
something hard and real to go up against— 
call it a wall, call it 
your brother. Call it the angel  
who came to wrestle 
but was forced to bestow  
a blessing. Strength is a woman  
with her hand knotted in a lion’s mane.  
Yours to claim or disavow.  
I wield no gun,  
slingshot, nor lightning bolt.  
Only the memory  
of membrane and synapse, 
how you once had to belly-crawl 
through my very body 
to get into the world.  
I live in you as beauty,  
call it spirit or flesh, 
call it a swift elbow strike  
to will the wall DOWN 
that separates—let mine be the blow  
that wakes the castle 
from its dream of parapets and spikes.  
Let mine be the courage  
of the trembling tongue 
that confesses its true need, 
so you can lie in my arms, a cub again 
at last, a sheaf of immortal flowers.