poetry

mapping the damage

mapping the damage

We don’t know the world
the way the crow flies
or embers blow.

So when my friend says her sister
across from Warembourg
is displaced, I don’t understand why.

But where did the ash come from there?
I ask, puzzled.
From our street! she says (with the obviously! implied).

I think about it,
consult the map,
and of course she’s right –

it’s straight east of Mulberry
in a way the winding suburban streets
and bike paths make you forget.

There are burned chunks
of other people’s houses in her attic

she says,

and I finally grasp
how one sister’s home could have
lit the other’s up.

But, thankfully,
my friend’s house held
and they were both spared that fate.

Now they try on simpler smaller lives
in different parts
of this parched brown valley.

We’re all relearning this landscape
with a new level of intimacy,
a gift we wouldn’t have asked for
that changes us anyway.

poetry

the fog lifts

the fog lifts

after all these long grey lean years
the fog lifts
leaving a bluer sky
than I’ve ever known
and a rosy warmth
(the joy of being enough)
where all I expected
was the close damp chill
and confusion of mist
where you can’t see
your hand in front of your face
where you listen to faint echoes
to triangulate where you are
now there’s finally enough light
to read the map myself
step out with confidence
that the ground will hold
and I’ll see my way home
to all those loving hearts
that waited patient
while I felt my way
from one dead end to the next
in a maze not of my making
where a compass wouldn’t work