The Day Before Surgery
from my new collection
The Day Before Surgery
When I say, I’m going outside
to feed the dark-eyed
juncos, what I really mean is
I need to find a place
where my shadow is one
with the red oak,
and this fear—weighing
like last night’s snow
on rhododendron buds,
turns to slush.
What I need is to follow
forked prints left by crows,
the zig-zag tail drag
of a hungry opossum
and blood-red berries
dropped by the mockingbird
rattling around
in the sleet-frozen holly.
I need to know, this is not
the last time I will hear
snow-crunch underfoot,
Carolina wrens fussing
at cats stalking the brush pile,
feel winter’s wind-sting,
the cold dagger of an icicle
in a wool mitten.
Thank you for reading a small spectacle. It is my sincere hope that this wintering season brings you refuge and light, and that all the world can heal in broken places.
For more poems that hold space for stillness and recovery, while drawing on a reverence for the natural world, my newest collection, No One Ever Says, is now available in the LuLu bookstore.
This is wonderful, MK. I love how your poems take us so deeply into the natural world that is also our own.
Your capacity to make beauty nourishment and doorways to wonder out of suffering is freaking gorgeous and so inspiring, my friend. I LOVED your new book, I sat and read the whole thing through, and I felt like I was sitting with you in the thick of it all... and what a gift it is to be let in to the nitty gritty truths and griefs and reverent attention to it all. Deep bows to your courage, your heart, and your alchemy.