“The end is where we start from.”
— T. S. Eliot
If I Could See the End Coming
I wouldn’t expect a sudden white light
or a familiar crowd on the horizon
waving me forward—just trees hiking
down the mountainside, winter creek
softening at the edges, filling with snowmelt,
tumbling toward me. My husband,
a river-runner, would be holding a trout
he carved from redwood burl, curved grain
giving momentum to fins, his voice
only in my head. “If you’re swept away,
point your feet downstream.”
Beyond me, there’d be leaping,
the sporadic glimpse of deer, squirrels
threading understory. I’d nod
to a single black bear up on two legs,
the last wild man, savoring the air
above his face. I’d watch the low moon
step down from a locust branch, pause
at another, and slip away. All would be,
or seem, a slow process, like falling
in and out of love, again and again,
with the same person for years. Many thanks to The North Coast Journal for publishing this poem in its January 3, 2013 Issue. Hurray, we made it into the New Era … now let’s hope for a global community where enlightened & empathetic actions lead the way.