WHEN I COME BACK, I WILL BE GRIEF

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When I lived by the lake 

- smell of cattails and weeping willow -
it was always summer.
I woke to the sound of water
slapping the side of the cottage:
my Grandma, watering things down
against the heat of the day.
Then she pulled the canvas awnings down
like sleepy eyelids
over the front windows.

Smell of sweet peas, peonies and pinks;
wisteria, mimosa.
Tall hollyhocks beside the hammock
where I dreamed away
summer afternoons.

I remember being

the only swimmer in the lake,

during an afternoon thunderstorm,

back then,

the air metallic,

pewter sky lowering,

rumbling, growling.

I was whole, then,
before the fracturing and distress
of living through my teens,

of growing up,

and men, and pain and calamity,

the rest of my life spent

reclaiming

all I had lost.

I will return to that wholeness
from whence I came, one day.
I will be cattails, 

standing dry, bent and broken
at the edge of the pond.
I will be wolf-pup, 

peering fearfully
from my den,
knowing, to survive,
I must elude
the predatory Two-Leggeds,

who are everywhere.

I will be deer,
fleeing the flaming forests.

I will be mother orca, holding
my dead newborn calf above the water
for three days, grieving,

unable to let her go.

I will be grief itself,
watching the world I love
burning itself up.