You can cry into the
kleenex on your desk.
You can profess your
heartbreak to the
wall, so the weight
you carry like four
trashbags of leaves
somehow mingled
with wood in the fall
becomes not another’s
reluctance to hear, or
the unknown burdens
you cast to the wind
blowing it away as if
they’re spikes instead
of daffodils.
I cry into a kleenex,
and profess my
heartbreak on the
page for I never wish
for emotions, the love
my daughter stirs, to
be on public display
other than when
confessed in a poem.
I wish not to leave the
friends; even they,
whom I’d never meant
to let so far in, with any
reluctance. For in her
death, the wind cast
spikes rather than
daffodils.
The days when I cry
into a kleenex are
fewer than the season
when people pack
trashbags with leaves.
Step outside one day
at a time, and refuse
to recoil when I hear
that people are putting
out their
hummingbird
feeders again
for such birds of blue and
green my Corrie shows to
me in my sleep.
When I step outside, it
reminds me of the
mother I must be to
my son in this second
life, and to teach him
how the
hummingbirds play,
but don’t easily trust
when they flit about
the feeders.
Friend, even in my
moments when I
reach for the kleenex
and seem disposed to
bags of leaves mixed
with wood, I hope you
see the me rising from
the pile left behind in
a yard far in the country
where a purple horizon
rests, or think of the
dogwood tree ripped
from the ground by
the tornado before last
spring. My husband has
replanted it, and its roots
are bound through the
ground this spring.
Friend, I am sorry you
had to take a part of
this journey alongside
me never knowing
the depths it would
reach for it is impossible
for you to walk my path,
or for me to walk in yours.
But in all ways, in all
seasons, in the moments of
kleenex thrown about the
desk, when we wonder why
someone asks such questions,
when four bags of leaves are
somehow mixed with wood,
in the anger and wondering,
in the moments of
awkwardness and
the shadows few
understand,
and when you work on
your raspberry plant;
I hope you know,
most importantly,
you are forever the moment when
the hummingbird comes to
the feeder and stays for
more than a minute.
By Rebecca T. Dickinson. Copyrighted by R.T. Dickinson, 2021
Corrie's Season 