Ask Me

A Poem

This poem first appeared as the 3rd of a 4-part piece published under something like the same name: Ask Me, A Question Lived in Four Parts.

After some revision, I think it’s more powerful standing alone, so I shared it in a note a while back. That still didn’t feel solid enough, so I’m giving it space here, too. It explores the complicated blend of joy, grief, horror, and love we encounter through life, the endurance so often called for in the darker hours, and making it through.

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Ask me about the few seconds of fear traded for the robin’s spared life.
Or the slow seep of water one blackening night, willing itself toward the house, almost,
And the joy-grief at the sight of grey goslings, unbothered in
pond-morning mist—
       the otters will soon return

How the heart cracks open, but can never respond,
To the frantic, incessantly-bleeting whitetail doe,
Sharing with me this island of green within so many miles
Of ash and charred trees, still burning—
Wheezing scorched air,
Looking for the comfort of another

Ask me how watching eight doves, flocking at dusk, sharpens a life to a single breath.
Or of the fox in the yard, limp hare in its jaws, leaving a trail of colorless tracks,
And the brightness of crimson, seared into snow, showing the way to the place where the struggle had ended—
       the blood was still warm

How was it that the calf moose died not minutes before,
His final bed among willows and lupine and sweetgrass,
Green aspen shoots all around—
Not thin, nor injured, his mouth full of food—
As though in the throes of one heavenly thought, his heart simply could no longer bear 
       The—dreadful—beauty?

Ask, and I’ll tell you of so many things
The glance of the Chickadee’s wing on the cheek,
Wild strawberry tea,
Digging through wetlands, bare-handed, for the roots to heal somebody—

It’s a land steeped with life,
And devotion,
With blood,
And with death.

What then is next, when the joy and the grief and the love ask so much?

I’ll tell you:
To take up the place in your arms, and heart
To see, to dwell, to give, and go on

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