Spring Poem For the Sake of Breathing, Written After a Walk to Foster Island

The sky wants the water to turn grey, but if I notice how waves play with the clumps of yellow flags, or the way turtles share logs, or even try to understand a friend’s decision to walk onto a glacier and end her life—I will be ready for any poems that have been waiting. The horizon opens as I walk, escorted by swans and Canada geese. I need to stop backpedaling into the present. In my old life people would straighten the truth, but the river flows in curves. The names of my father and my mother rest next to each other in Greenwood Cemetery. The distance between me and the mountains measures an uneven thought: I feel like an orphan. An early moon is just a piece of change in the softening sky. Light is such an actress. Time to seek Hopper’s wish to simply paint sunlight on the wooden wall of a house. I am growing older. Maru in Japanese means the ship will make it back home.