Yorty Creek

Yorty Creek

You thought it was a woodpecker.

but I always remembered a hummingbird,
and it makes sense, doesn’t it – you,
sturdy, balanced, chipping away slowly
your place in the world, and me,
flighty, wistful; afloat in whirring frenzy,
bursting with nectar tasted only when
shared, never known home
as anything less fleeting than a whisper
of tulips, dipped to petals like gossamer
thread through a needle: whimsical, im-
practical, sometimes piercing, but always
found purpose in helping things grow.

I don’t know, you said
but I can tell you what I hope
and after that I admit,
I heard nothing -
only feathery thrumming
jammed to silence with a
shoe-drop thud. I’m still
learning stillness
as more than
free-
fall.
&

in this parable of mistakes, you
are the archetype I understand
most and least, and even if
all you meant when you said
we were like a dream to you
was eventually,
we had to wake up

somehow
I can’t regret a moment
wasted believing in some prophecy
or myth, colliding us across continents,
universes, across fire and water and dust, once,
twice, into a fragile infinity we dared the fates was
mystic-spun from more
than coincidence.

It has to be, you said
the way I’d started, unbidden
this old Navajo fable you
heard as a child, of a brave little bird
whose beak pierced blackness, gave us
the stars we slept under that night.

You said in that year we went
without a word to each other,
knowing I was out there writing
poems to keep myself sane made
you smile, and I wonder
if you’ll ever find out
                          you became one.

&
tonight,
when I saw the very
first hole
in the sky, I wished
that if you do
it will make you smile.