Missing

I don’t know where you are sister/friend

in the swirl of city streets, a woman can get

disoriented, did you miss your step

did you go through a door

my mind is weary for all

the missing, every day another

woman, girl, boy is missed

my imaginings scare me

white caps on the big river, here is life teaming toward you

brilliant and burdened, wonderous in your imperfection

faults give depth to your glorious beauty of heart, of mind

moss verdant, vibrantly alive, Seattle rain brings

snow dust on Satus Pass, another morning sun

rising like a revelation of eagles building nests

I say a quiet prayer for us all

These Woods

My window sparkles with dew

waking me again to bitter knowledge

bombs are falling, children starving

my eyes cannot close to their pain

though my garden is calling me.

Another drought, another summer, I pull a hose

to water roses and tomato plants.

in the sky swallowtails reflect a pale sun,

a pileated woodpecker beats

a staccato percussion on a fir,

the echo bounces over jade and granite

rocks protruding from binding earth.

Woodpeckers mate for life, like you and I

pouring their lives out in these woods

in the breeze that ripples the bracken ferns

like you and I, on this land — allotted

on the signed treaty — to your Duwamish grandfather.

He marked the saplings, bending and cutting them

to serve as signs his time to ours. We try

to discern his messages in the trees, but at every turn

we see — as he did before us — the wonder of these woods