Does the Leaf Still Believe

by Catherine McGuire

in the tree when it’s fallen?
Lying on the grass, first brittle
then slime? Does it recall
its brash emergence,
a rice kernel bud reaching out, slurping
the rain’s nectar, the sun’s manna?
A kin to the others rustling alongside
but never a clone, a copy –
did it glory in that extra green vein,
or the tiny twist of its edge?
And now discarded, pushed off
by new buds, useless except
as mulch, new soil born of the slime.
Regret or content? So much hangs
on what story we’re told.

Never Mariah

by  Catherine McGuire

I.
From my viewpoint on this flat plain
the stormfront’s billows                      iceberg down the Cascades
like a Titanic-buster                 wet droplets mass like steel
overhead.

II.
Autumn rakes the fields          combs leaves
from alders      baring thin branching fingers
that reach toward geese skeins           ebbing in waves
across a periwinkle sky.

III.
And why does lonely humanity call the wind names
at all?   Why do we hear it weep         and mourn    
as Tess the rain cries our tears?           We want to be big as the sky
stretch our skin            miss nothing.

IV.
Dusk’s purple stains the afternoon     shrinks the landscape
fade to black                to the width of a lamp post’s light
as the field puddles                 glint like shards
of fallen sky.

V.
With sight gone           the voice of wind grows
tumbled clatter of objects unseen       sensed as portents
gives wind the ghostly face    that deserves               demands
a name.