ENDINGS

Photo by S. Auberle

ENDINGS

Once a very old nun said to me:
art is seeing the connections between things...
so the things I'm about to tell you are related,
interconnected by cosmic threads,
isn't everything they say?
Maybe at the end it will all make sense.
These days I'm having trouble with endings
and finishing a poem is a major event for me

so you'll be lucky if this poem has an ending.
It may just wander off into space,
leaving you to write your own conclusions
as to why this stopped clock is important
and what makes the clock tick again,
berating me for its lost hours

and why are there storm clouds in this poem?
These clouds that keep me watching with a wary eye
because last week, in this mountain country,
20,000 recorded lightning strikes took place
and that day a doctor in our town
was struck by lightning--a direct hit

they said, and absolutely no one
survives this except that when he was hit
he fell forward to the ground, striking his chest
on a rock that must have started his heart again
and now he walks around the town
burned and bruised, telling his story
to whose who need it. But still,
what does this have to do with endings

because he didn't end and the wonder is why?
And then there are the hummingbirds
but I don't want to talk about them
or that emptiness outside in this feverish air.
I don't want to see a red feeder hanging there,
motionless against a stormy sky.

I don't want to know that these small warriors
have left on their long migration
southward through lightning and stars
because it's hard enough to know
that last night, while I was sleeping,
a siren call lifted them out of their nests,
thrumming through their wings and hearts

leaving this empy space behind
where I dream of burning men
and Dali-clocks melting the hours of my life away.
Where this morning something in my life is ending
and now the leaving comes again,
words and hummingbird days of summer
whirling away in a chill wind.

- mimi