These Hazy Days

Today I Went A-walking

Today I went a-walking
for many suburban miles
through the air, the light,
the scents, the quiet elation
of the sun upon the leaves.

The towhees kept to themselves
under the camellias
while the chickadees bathed
in temporary cooking bowls
sitting earnestly on raised pots.
The dogs barked as usual
and the cats were coy in the shadows.

Strange that it was all so familiar to me
when I hadn't been a-walking in a year.
Yes, a full three-hundred sixty-five.

The last time I went a-walking
I tripped in every puddle.
By the end my ankles smarted and I
collapsed onto the ground. I remember
crying like a wounded thing, wild and
unkempt. I carried myself home on
my injured pride
to spend the remainder of the year
motionless in my garden.

My house made me feel trapped
and trembling, and a-walking
had hurt me--so the garden
was a safe space
(though it still couldn't make
me happy).

In that year of idleness, I nearly
grew into the yard itself.
Paralysis turned my heavy feet
into roots and I   e xp an ded
          downwards.

My hands became much like
small birds, always fidgeting
and restless. Sometimes to stall
the itching, I would knit red and
riddled scarves. But every time,
just as I was about to cast it off,
the robins stole the yarn home
to their nests
to unravel, then raise upon.

I took to whittling wood.
I cut myself a lot, though never
on purpose (really).
It didn't hurt too much.

With my blade I carved hollows
into dry twigs; I added in some
hardy holes, then raised it to my lips.
I never could make sound--
at least, not anything musical.
Sometimes my crude flutes
weakly whistled
like a frail subconscious voice,
but most often it was just the
futile rasping of my breath
and but for that, pained silence.

Today I walked. What changed?

I hardly know
myself.
This morning I woke up
in my garden chair and I felt
a sharp twist spear my back.
I stood and my spine cracked--
what a feeling!
I felt my body ache for movement
so I took a step and then my legs laxed.
I took one more step--then another--
then another--and next thing I knew,
I was carefree and a-walking.

As I walked, I looked around me,
the first true time in deflated
weeks of fifty-two.
Those frozen days were
long behind me
now I knew.

At one point on my walk, I knelt
into some waving grass--
prettier blades then metal.
I plucked a strand and straddled it
with two anticipatory thumbs.
With a childish impulse long buried,
I blew. A sound emerged--
spluttering and shrieking
and almost (nearly) laughing.

I laughed along, our raw and rusty
voices like old summer companions.
I laughed at its horrible jubilant music
and I laughed at the sun above.
I laughed and sang and started home
with a fresh lilt in my steps.

Last year I wood-whittled,
this year I'd grass-whistle.
There was something in that thought
that filled me with the brightest joy.

When I reached my homely yard, I saw
something new in the beds--a fallen sky-thing,
black feathers plucked and hanging.
A dead crow.
I took a spade and buried the bird
in a wide warm hole. I placed a stone
where it lay, and arranged a bouquet
of wrinkled flowers around it.
I laid down in the grass and cried.