by Charlene Langfur
At night my small dog and I track the moon.
Tonight it is full and powerful and dreamy
but by morning there is only clarity.
My 13-pound honey-colored dog and I
are out walking into the world around us,
impermanent, passing, the wild green mesquite
crazy with new life, the tiniest pods,
and the orange blossom flowers of the cactus
bigger than yesterday, the yucca taller.
All of it is the same and none of it is.
On days like this I think each day
is a beginning, a first time. A push for life
against what has been broken and lost,
drifted off into time and patience,
years fallen away and now I’m in a time when there is less,
when the fan palms still shine in the first of light
immoveable after the big wind of last night,
as if anything is possible here where
the barrel cactus flourish and the tiniest lizards
run amok. How can I express how much takes to life
no matter what else happens to push us all back.
None of it diminishes actually. I keep a few cups full
of saved seeds in the kitchen ready to plant. And even now
a few sunflowers near the front door are already
a foot high or maybe more, soon enough
their yellow petals reaching for the sky.