Keeping Watch

Earlier today, we wound our way 

through lush lavender and green, 

bougainvillea cascading red down terra cotta walls.

A stuccoed portico covered round tiles

that spilled like pools of smooth latte 

around the curve of the pink pebbled drive.

The path around the house 

separated hibiscus from bird of paradise, 

split this shaded view of the distant ocean 

from mid afternoon sun.

Intermittent winds gusted hard, 

turning left out of Africa.

They blew harder still on the open terrace 

where brown fingers rubbed lime and salt onto glasses, 

their rims ringing with each twist 

of the hand.  

We witnessed the sea turn 

from jade to aqua then violet

while shaved ice melted into tequila.

Mammoth rocks jutted out of the water 

where longtails and cahows rested, 

keeping watch over ebb tide,

like us.  

Steel drums beckoned us down to the beach.  

We wove along the narrow path through sea grass 

onto a long pier that met the mound of late sun 

at the horizon.

The pictures we took show us in silhouette, 

orange spreading out over the water behind us. 

You can’t see our faces, 

only that 

black wind had whipped our hair out 

like the spine of the lionfish as it slid 

among crevices of a murky cave

far below low tide.  

Strange, there’s a safe abandon this far out over the water. 

Just under us waves writhe dark, foreign,

and tufts of plants with white tendrils waver 

like ghosts in slow motion.

Earlier our glass-bottomed boat slid over 

gnarled conchs and sporadic seaweed, 

and some fish like aliens walked the ocean floor.

They are below us here too, 

and more.  

This afternoon,

we had followed the flight of two lone seagulls

winging over turquoise swells,

white caps running like fingers over a key board.   

They had swooped down to fish 

from a school of grouper on the surface, 

then retreated. 

The cloudless sky had offered 

yet another empirical look,

to keep watch

over the incessant turn of  tides

and all that belongs below. 

© Susan Muse, 2013

Lionfish
Photo by Daniel Dietrick
Wikimedia Commons

Visit

Mother and two cubs lumbered black 

from the shadows under heavy maples

whose branches spread out over the lilacs 

bordering the backyard.

The babies left their mother to scramble up a pine 

gnarled from past winters and dry summers.  

They draped their legs over two branches, 

their long fur cascading like Spanish moss, 

and watched the larger bear paw her way to the back deck.

Behind thin glass, I peered over my reading glasses at the scene,

mesmerized by her proximity and her enormous paws,

their claws manicured into steel knives,

her fur knitted into thorny brier.

How unconcerned she was with the swing 

set into slight motion

or the chimes twirling in the wind.  

She rose clumsily on heavy back legs 

and tilted the bird feeder on its side, 

shoving stolen food past well-worn teeth 

onto a pink tongue.   

She glanced over, no thought for me.  

With a growl, the mother beckoned her babies,

their fur a tapestry in shadow.  

They bounded down the tree, leaves shaking like maracas 

and 

joined her at the tilted bird trough.  

Together they gulped the remaining gravel down,

then side-stepped the slide to head for blackberries,

thornless and plump from last night’s rain.

© Susan Muse, 2013

 Mother black bear, a cub barely visible
Photo by Alan Vernon, Wikimedia Commons

Picnic Table

The neighbors who were moving brought it over,

a picnic table, almost new,

and asked if we wanted it for the back yard.

“You’re the ones with children- 

and everything,” they added 

with a look of longing, 

some relief. 

It has sat in the same place all these years,

rough from the wear of seasons, 

its cedar planks once braced flat and perfect,

now like buck teeth.

My children are grown now 

but the table remains, top of the slope 

in the back yard.  

It is a place for me to sit in silence, 

away from the loneliness 

of an unwritten poem.

From here I have watched ground hogs

climb the creek bank, cross the yard,

one trailing the other.  

They never saw me as they nudged

June apples 

littering the ground green.   

I have watched leaves wander in fall wind,

brown and scampering through the garden 

like new puppies.

And this winter I noticed how cold rain had dropped 

into stalactites suspended from bare branches 

in the cherry tree nearby.

It’s funny.  Such a random gift and its impact.  

We never heard from those neighbors again. 

They probably don’t remember us

or the table they gave away.

But it is here that I come to consider 

all manners of things.

Yesterday it was how the Peace Lily had bloomed 

on the day he died

and how I had found such comfort

in this small thing.

Today I find myself out here again.

A trio of robins has lined up and shaken 

late snow off the red bud

onto my solitary post.  

I know now it won’t last long enough,

either the last breath of winter

or this first gasp of spring.

© Susan Muse, 2012

Groundhog: photo from Wikimedia Commons

After the Storm

We waited for the late afternoon downpour

to turn to mist, 

when the front garden smelled 

of old worms, new earth.  

I stepped in the wet; 

it took my footprints 

with submission.   

The weeds had taken over the yellow

in the Yarrow, the patience in the Impatiens, 

and the blooms of begonia were beaten purple 

in the falling dark.

I handed you a claw to grab brown tangle 

that braided beneath Black Eyed Susans and Sedum,

Dianthus and Daylilies.

You tugged, arms outstretched, 

sweat rose over your lip like a first mustache, 

or the blister ballooning on the side of your finger.   

Quietly, dusk gathered under the umbrella 

of the Japanese maple.

We pulled the last interloper and headed to drink 

the run of cold water

from a hose coiled aimlessly 

in the side yard. 

© Susan Muse, 2011

Dianthus barbatus; photo by AutoGyro at Wikimedia Commons