Earth and Moon

For Alison and Emily- At Camp

When I joined
that longest line of women,
it was earth that fed me,
my wings folded over
the world within.

Your souls were air,
but we were all wetness,
milky melting,
barely formed.

The moon pulls
my wombless winging self.
You fly over earth,
circling each other,
then
for a moment,
straight back to the space
where you used to be.

Driving Back from Michigan

The day I left Michigan there were tornado warnings.

I stayed for church to hear my brother sing, stayed for dinner with my mother at the retirement home for one last goodbye, guilty that a part of me was relieved to be going.

I heard the radio weather reports as I rushed eastward, hoping to outrun the storm, but it hit: blinding sideways rain howling gray and unimpeded across the flat Ohio fields. I pulled over, but the road signs were ripped loose, the car rocked, the lone trees twisted and torn.

Should I keep going, maybe drive away from it, or sit helpless while the car rolled over and over? My heart was pounding, I who love wind, and I went on slowly for more than an hour before it finally let up. Later I heard that tornadoes had touched down several places along the Ohio Turnpike.

That night I dreamed I was in a car with my mother. One road was rutted ice by a cliff's edge, the other so steep it went upside down. I steered toward the cliff road and woke in a sweat, turned on the light.

When will I become like my mother? Far from fearing death, her memory fading, slipping her thoughts away from unpleasantness. We asked her to sign a DNR form, then she looked out her window:
"What is that little bird on the feeder? Have you ever seen such shaggy bark on a maple tree?"