I'm working on it

Many years ago, twenty-some, Ellen Bryant Voigt (a  poet) told me I should be writing every day. Just shut the door--to keep the kids out--and write. I knew it was true, because inspiration comes then, when you're working. I didn't do it. Couldn't.

But now and then I have to write a poem--or try to--just so I'll know my head still works. Inspiration? Hmm. That's another subject.
Here's what I'm working on now. I haven't found the right title yet. So on and so forth.


From My Window

That squirrel,
playing around the trunk
of my neighbor's lopsided tree,
jumps up on the trunk and runs down,
turns flips, stops to flick his tail,
circles the tree again,
then repeats the whole dance.
It is like a dance
whose music invites abandon--
he looks wild,
that squirrel, and joyful.

What I see
is his singleness.
He is alone (or is it, she is alone?).
And I try to draw some lesson,
as I often do.

I have seen squirrels by twos
perform those acrobatic flips,
chase each other between
the ash and the dawn redwood
in my own yard,
run up and down each tree,
around and around the trunks,
stopping now and then to hold
a pose for one another,
then start up again
to repeat every step
or chase back and forth
across my roof.

The birds hold their peace
while the squirrels play:
the sparrows, robins, even the mourning doves
who every day whine out their grief.
What are they mourning? I wonder.
Perhaps the birds watch
from the nearby sycamore or honey locust,
drawing their own lessons.

The trees I know,
what they will do and when,
like the sycamore--it will hold its leaves
until late, late autumn--
or the dawn redwood
which, in spite of its name,
is not evergreen.
And I know the birds.
Robins, quails, even flickers, visit my lawns;
sparrows and finches have long
borrowed corners of my house for nest building,
with my blessing.

I don't much like squirrels,
but I have watched them,
noted their wildness with some small envy,
and, after twenty years,
thought I knew them.  But
this one squirrel is a puzzle,
acting out his happy dance alone.
I do not know what it means to me,
perhaps nothing at all,
but something about it
is not right, and I
cannot believe that squirrel
is not longing for something,
someone.