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Aftermath
We came home to find the great oak
down across the driveway.
Already we̢۪d slipped ed and skidded up the hill,
leaving dirty treadmarks in snow, evidence
of how you unditched us, reversing
for the jump back onto asphalt. And now,
the oak, upturned, root as thick as my waist
in the air, highest branches brushing
a corner of the house. In years of wind
it stood our shelter.
"Plenty of firirewood now," you said, not
mentioning how much of winter
is ahead, nor how much work lopping
limbs, swamping, bucking into rounnds
for splitting. It was so beautiful  I mean
the tree, maaking breeze for us
in swelter, and gold-leaf coin.
But nothing ends neatly.
A Miwok Basket
Willow twined with tule,
it waits, almost buried under blue-
oak leaf fall, a burden of forest litter.
Still the willow calls for water.
Willow calls and weather listens.
Clouds gather pewter-gray,
rain to wash the granite silver.
Willow rootlets gather water,
willow-basket catches sky and river,
one red feather
of a rainbow. Black oak sings of rain
beside a sapling willow.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada,
and also helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects.
Her poems have appeared in America, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry
International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she’s included in the anthology
California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her latest book,
The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), is winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize.
Email: Taylor Graham
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