Small moments can make big memories. One such small moment flitted past, hummingbird-quick, thirteen years ago. At the time, the exchange lasted seconds. But it has hovered in the peripheral vision of my memory, causing me to glance sidelong at it, time and again.

In the Arboretum

He plunges his nose into a lilac cluster and
inhales,
drinking the scent into his lungs 
the way a marathoner gulps water
a dozen miles into the race, 
as if the dainty petals’ perfume
is the sustenance of life.

He catches my gaze and quirks a brow.
“Yeah, I stop to smell flowers. 
So what?” he says,
words a soft-tipped arrow
fired from a smile’s bow.
He doesn’t realize
he owes no explanation to me,

Because while he admires the flower,
I admire his attention to the bloom.

Two volumes on my summer reading list included Good Poems, American Places compiled by Garrison Keillor, and Amanda Lovelace’s collection The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One. Both books have inspired me to dabble in poetry again.

As always, I can’t promise my poetry is any good. But there’s joy in the writing.

Murmuration

A flock of blackbirds
billowed
over a rural stretch
of Route 23.
Starlings, or grackles maybe,
thousands of
black pixels against
a blue canvas of sky,
shaping into
a half-formed image
before dissolving
like a dream
escaping waking’s grasp.

I pulled my car
to the shoulder to watch
them dance
to the metronome of
my hazard lights,
searching for
meaning in
their pattern as they
swooped, ascended,
condensed, separated.
Eventually they blended
into the tree line, and
I wondered if maybe

the meaning was
never in the pattern,
but only
in the flight.