It is so tempting and somewhat expected
To measure a year in numbers.

Twelve months, twelve thousand
More dollars in a bank.

Today, eight months since spring.

In Colorado, only one inch of rain
Since July.

How many trees lost to fires?

I can’t count how many prayers.

Next year I will have three hundred and sixty-five days.

And I don’t intend on wasting
Any single one of them.

How devastating the quiet was
Without your paws pawing
Beneath my door

So excited to hear me snoring
So thrilled to belong to me
And I to you, friend.

So very quiet.

We made a game out of it
clapping mosquitos between our palms
while we sat on a blanket
in the middle of, honestly,
their house, covered in grass and dew.
And we quoted, I'm sure a very smart scientist
who said that they could be eradicated—
all of them
those tiny things with
black and white striped legs
and long thirsty throats—
without any significant damage done.
If that is the standard
for whether a thing should exist
or whether it shouldn't,
I pray no big and great thing
notices us, melting entire continents and
setting entire countries on fire.

We met you in the morning
Two miles up the mountain’s spine.
All broad and beautiful,
Full of intent, and of blackberries.
Before I knew it not three yards stood between us.
My two legs together were smaller than just one
Of your outstretched arms, reaching
For something sweet in the bushes. Quite like us, I think.
“Black bear” is the word we used.
You sauntered off, smelling of musk and honey,
Your child, all fluff and fight, in tow,
Probably entirely not knowing
That you were the miracle of the day.

I like the way my father talks about trees. Introducing me to the one across the street from the new house—"This one's a sycamore, and I'd say it's doing a **** good job at it." It'd be a cliché to say he thinks of them as his friends, which he doesn't. But it wouldn't be overdone to say that he knows them as if they were, which he does.

have the snails,
the owls,
the quiet and sleepy groundhogs
ever once complained
about something as wonderful
as the rain

It's a cliché, almost,
daffodils springing out of snow.
But does that mean that
it's not worth noticing,
maybe even marveling at?