From your distance it must seem
as if the run-off is gone,
the big storm leveled now like a calm ocean,
so that only ripples remain
of the pain, the debris, call it that.
Distance is what makes you think
the dolphins are back, the whale
passage will resume in the strait,
and everything is settled,
the incandescent lights from the North
symbolize what you need them to.
But you can’t see them.
Where you are, grief has no seeds
in its pocket left to spread.
Summer makes you glow
and everything around you puffs with sun’s applause.
Here the wind blows powder from the trees,
the cottonwoods are sticky with sap
and the evening has an ominous roar
of navy jets from the island practicing.
I sit on our small deck and watch the birds
chase each other from the dangling feeder
the way we chased each other.
My heart still takes the angle of your heart.