MARKING TIME
(for freda robertson)

jogging out in the morning
against the few high clouds the blue
sky is a memory like a sheer silk fabric
held so far back i can’t see thru it–
when i breathe the new air my body
is young all over, a smell reminds
how the two pear trees are white
again, their flowers ephemeral
as the words i recite to pass time
in repetitious wheezed breath–
squirrels, blue jays, downed trees for markers
to say how far i’ve gone, to be used
in their brief names to crowd my mind
with anything i can count on.
today as i struggle against the wind
up the hill i watch a small butterfly
wavering with spread wings, and remember
dreaming of my sister who called
last night when i was sleeping, and how
twenty years ago she gave me
from the held darkness of her brown palms
a black butterfly with yellow specks.
what it was she said is immaterial,
there is the gesture though:
and watching a bird overhead fly
past the disk of sun, there is a flaring
shadow fanned down from above
that flickers like a rustled page
with a poem on it; it is that quick
flute darkness of a sister’s voice
a brother will hear in his heart
when he’s breathing deeply enough.