After a photograph by Julie Adams
My neighbor says whenever she’s sad she sits down
with a cup of tea and writes a list of fifty things
she loves, you know, like chocolate chip cookies,
the fresh warmth of laundry spilled from the dryer,
the crescent moon held between tree branches.
I’m remembering this with my arms full of wet towels,
the petition to stop fracking in the far pasture
denied, my heart busted by that and other losses
with their many sharp points. I didn’t know I loved so much
of this vanishing world—early spring breeze rattling cattails
along the pond, bright sword of sunlight on mountain snow,
a toddler singing in the shopping cart, the boy who holds the door
open for me, the car that waits, the promised rain that comes—
and you, daughter, years before the fire that took the barn,
before the divorce, before you moved to the city
for work. I see you ambling home on your chestnut gelding,
your long hair and his long tail, swinging
the lasso as if you could capture the setting sun,
to keep a perfect day from disappearing, to hold it
like a flame inside your heart for the dark days to come.
