A tailor bird, though busy wanted to stitch the best
of clothes for me to wear , in a fair, getting nearer,
so thankful, I was, though it'd hardly fit a man
of my size, I bow my head, overwhelming is her love!

The swift, I always admire for her speed, promises
to take me for an arial tour, 100 km an hour, no less
all 148gm, of love is she !though I appreciate that,hardy can
I fly with this tiny parcel of energy, many a kin whose love
again is hard to reciprocate, unless I realize we all are one.

Stomped earth with broad feet
Fastening fresh saplings into
Whole forests
Eight feet by eight feet, the grid
Through winter month's
To early spring
Line of tree planters, twenty
Sometimes less, sometimes more
On Shasta, on Lassen, on Trinity Alps
Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pines
In Mendocino, in Eureka
Planting baby giants, Redwoods
Sequoias in Sequoia National and Klamath
Young men with ***-dads
Knew some old ones too
Women as well, though few
If you could bear the snow, the rain
If you could bear back-breaking pain
The glory is yours
As was once mine
Reforestation
Go plant your line
To be eternally in
Mother Nature's good graces
And kinship known by campfire

let’s go back a
hundred-thousand years

to these ragged edges
torn rains
raw greens
biting seas

to the first sunrise,
now understood.
tears of calm joy –

a return.

we find ourselves
in this,
a kinship;
our brother is
our keeper,
and we
its’ guardian,
walk the edges
and the smooths;
our planet,
Earth’s children

We are not soldiers
But for every heart
That breaks yonder
Tears falling
Feeling loss
There are my brothers

For every mother
Aching with the pain
Of deprivation
Of sorrow for child’s loss
For anguish in imagined failure
To care for her kin
There is my sister

For every ounce of sand
Seedling buried in the earth
There is my mother

And for every shame birthed
That I took pleasure to learn from
In my labors and my leisure
There is my father

For everything
That is part of one
Whilst separate part of none
Riddles and riff raff
There am I
Related to everyone and everything
That grows green
Walks, crawls, slithers, or swims
Rots, falls, and withers
Therein all glory lye my kin

In the morning she eats garlic,
A bowl of them, boiled in a mixture.
Then medicine, then some kind of a
Breakfast. She stares into the blank
Of a day. Everything the same.
She does her usual things: clean,
Sweep, exercise, sometimes she reads.
I do not know what she does in the day,
Only the setting sun tells me of the lights
She doesn’t leave on, because “electrical bills”.

He says she spoiled the fridge, the kettle,
Even the tv doesn’t make a sound anymore.

She’s like a child. She whines, laughs,
Tells me off. She observes, dismisses.
She is the dying tip of an autumn leaf.
My silence is the autumn wind.
Cold, but not cold enough.

I do not know of the things she does in the day.
What does she do when the food is cooking in the pan?
Or when it rains and she rushes to save the laundry.
Only the chattering and muttering
From her creased mouth,
(the neighbours, groceries, the tv)
Tells me that she speaks only to herself.

She switches the tv on
before she leaves the house.
She sleeps before 9 pm.

She leaves in June, and I don’t know what she does in the day.