You Will Recognize What I am Saying or You Will Not
but outside my window it is December
and the pussy willow by the Kentucky pond
which cradles an empty nest
is pushing fresh fuzzy catkins
out the ends of every single branch
I touch them, to see how they feel.
on a north-facing porch
a pot of Gerber daisies sits perky
in full bloom; to be sure
I’m not catastrophizing, I touch the smooth
green leaves, the red petals,
to be sure they are real.
far from pond and porch daisies
a petroleum sultan-CEO who’s in charge of climate
talks in the sleek smog-shrouded sci-fi city of Dubai
says “there’s no science” behind a phase-out of fossil fuels—
I check the headline,
to be sure it is real.
Title from a line in Jane Hirshfield’s poem,
“Three Times My Life Has Opened”