Dawn Redwood

  Early morning light: a young red-tailed hawk



glided onto an overhead branch and peered



 



down at me, but it did not look with your eyes—



a battered and rusted pickup lies in the wash;



 



Navajo tea buds on the trail—I headed back



and checked, in the boiler room, the traps,



 



baited with peanut butter—now a gnat



flits against this lit screen: where are you now?



 



One morning, we walked in a Rhode Island



cemetery and did not look at a single gravestone;



 



we looked at hundred-year-old copper beeches,



cells burnished purple, soaking up sunshine,



 



and talked about the dawn redwood,



how the glimmering light at the beginning



 



of the world was in all things. This morning,



in the predawn darkness, Orion angled



 



in the eastern sky with Sirius, low,



above the ridgeline; and, before daylight



 



blotted out the stars, I heard you speak,



*the scratched words return to their sleeves*.