After Her Passing
By Gail Brenner
for Kathleen Flowers


Go out into the garden

before your restiveness and distraction

find you fumbling with papers.

Go see what has been born in the night.

What bud has popped open its beak,

wags its tongue in the fresh morning air.

What pale new shoot has pushed through

the caul of topsoil to make its entrance

into the verdant green of the world.

Turn away from the kitchen sink,

the dirge of daily news,

Head straight out the back door,

where oxalis has taken over yard, like a field of clover.

Weeds, yes, but what exuberant yellow

each small face peering out from every stone and crevice.

There is time enough for shuffling and filing of things--

things you know you will never again consult,

until years later you clear the files,

run everything through the shredder.

What use is that, when right now

the day is hailing itself at your doorstep?

Look how the feeders have hung empty all winter,

when cold and damp gave excuse from venturing out,

even for the sake of wintering birds.

Look how abandoned the trellis, the rain-weathered bench,

the watering can on its side in the weeds.

Look how a season of litter from redwoods, birch,

bay laurel has heaped at the base of the trees,

covered the stone walk with a tawny winter quilt.

And how the compost, full of detritus and debris

has ceased to steep and steam.

And there in the far corner of the yard,

dry and rusty brown, last winter’s Christmas tree,

still upright in its stand, branches

aloft in the sun as if

it doesn’t know it has died.

On this spring day, go out

and see for yourself the unbroken thread

that weaves through the seasons.

Take its tapestry in both of your hands,

and vow to live, live, live.

© Gail Brenner, April 13, 2009

Gail is a long-time ESL instructor for UC Santa Cruz . She’s the author of English for Dummies, and Webster’s American Idioms Handbook. Her poem, Mystery’s Shoes appears in the recent publication, Sisters Singing, an anthology of women’s spiritual works. She says that life in Santa Cruz under the redwoods is a daily inspiration to spirit and writing.