Patience of the Light

after Zagajewski

I need to write from one end of the page to the other, a wide spread like the ocean between Miami and Africa. I wonder if I am a good person. Sometimes the tree outside my window is alive and busy with poems. Sometimes it simply stands in awe of the light that pours down from the Rockies and bathes it in sundown. My daughter will watch her father die today. He will leave her and his other daughters and move into a light he creates as he’s leaving. Don’t be misled. I no longer love him. There is so much he needs to discover before it is safe for me. But the light is patient and the tree is a patient tree. I watch how it neither cringes nor bends in laughter when the bluejays get bossy or the squirrels run around as if they own every branch. I wonder if I can learn alive what I will surely learn after death. I think not. But for now, there’s a tree. For now, there’s a tree and a window through which to love it.