Startled still by singular moments—
white Little Blue
Heron, one-legged craning in man-made
lake; a certain slant of light turning
glass doorknob crystalline—
but I’ve grown to appreciate the repetitions:
raspberries along a sheltered trail,
Apache tears strewn about Tent Rocks,
pale buttons dying on Emily Dickinson’s ghostly dress.

Invited into her bedroom
I thought I’d compose a poem in the presence
of greatness but nothing came of it;
dove-washed
sky, mausoleum
of mystery, washing bowl set on non-descript
table. I pictured egrets instead, feasting
on tree frogs while grooming caiman backs.

Told not to use a pen, not to close the door,
prohibited from stepping beyond
the roped off area enclosing Miss Dickinson’s bed.
She would’ve been appalled, not by my trespass
but by the uniformity of my hour.

The dreary room woke a memory
of paper napkins
my mother would cut in half.
I pictured the lineup of homeless
panhandlers spaced in a row along the median
strip, but also leaves, wings, a curtain of rain
falling and falling endlessly.

No disarray apparent, no loaded gun nor buzzing fly.
From a window, a dozen flapping geese in formation.
Then two bluejays beneath the roof line.
No muse to spark ageing imagination.

I wonder if these squawking jays descended
from those Emily observed
as she wrote of her wild nights.
The trees in her garden, though,
are so young.