on cottonwoods
the cottonwoods have revealed their true color shining gold and yellow in autumn sun rays I wonder what you're writing these days or rather where you’re writing you swore bar napkins and loose paper scraps tucked into novels and folded into pockets held all your best words I can still see you at the kitchen table shirt off next to the wood-stove blazing bright with burning coals typing away at the story of us some sort of nonfiction fantasy haiku of a love we dreamed of but lacked the trust required to make real the cottonwoods are changing their colors but it was all orange toned desert summer heat or sagebrush blue barren bitter winter cold with us and while we picked the cottonwood buds together once from that massive branch heavy with life, saturated with water and blown down in the storm we put as many sticky buds as we could fit into our fists and pockets and from it came a salve that could heal wounds but you missed the cactus bloom and the short fleeting weeks of the aspens dancing in color why couldn't I convey to you the feeling of these changes then? I needed you I needed you to be witness to the cottonwoods changing again still waving their smiling rounded leaves at any movement of wind bravely facing the cycle of the seasons ready to let it all go I know we took our best shot at this loving the cottonwoods are changing again and you’re never here to see it
I’m feeling the shifts of the season and the return to my place in front of the fireplace, this time a wood stove of my own. The stillness and rest of integration that I have been longing for, is here. So I turn inward. As I look inside at the grief, the loss, the longing; I am captivated by the complexities of being human and I write these memories, these words, as an act of exploration, acknowledgement, and release.