Suppressed Memory

Overhead, six flew in.
They arrived with clarity that distance allows.

In the meadow we watched their circular formation, how they
tilted their pleated wings, graced the blue of the New England sky.

Why hawks? I asked. Why their sudden appearance?
And the shaman said, she simply said they are messengers.

I felt gratitude but, at the same time, was frail from the knowledge
the medicine woman imparted — a scene from my life

which had been lodged in me, silenced in the body
for years and for good reason it was.

The hawks formed a ring that was not to be broken.
They had this way of staring down deeply into the unknown self.

They pierced the air with their eyes and when my mouth took in
the wind, the wind took my words skyward —

they flew off for I had asked them to, had said what little I recall
is only what I am to know.

It was important to share I was not ready
to remember any one thing that could not be healed.

 

When a Life Ends Unexpectedly

I recently learned of someone’s brother
dying in a bathtub and no one knew for a month
until the odor of death penetrated
the apartment’s walls the stench of being unnoticed
drifted under the locked door until the tenants
called the manager who came with a key
and the thing about this is that I too have relatives
who live close by yet we see each other but
twice a year and others who live one hour away
none of us see so how does a life
come to be this way how did it get to where
when I think how close we once were

when thinking of closeness I have to admit
it is now with the trees especially when standing
among them in a place called Woods
their leaves flying down to my hands
their veined flesh filling my palms so many I want
to hold them all not like hands that cannot endure
the weighted emotion of emptiness mine will want
to be upturned with leaves spilling over so that
at the point of death my body will fall among them
onto the forest floor where they can begin
framing my face loving me back into the earth
down into my quiet end.