Empty Nest Poem: The Landlady and the Arborist

Imposing entrance. Photo image USF

The Landlady and the Arborist

I came home from leaving

my younger fair daughter

on the Lone Mountain

atop San Francisco

to the tree outside

my window

thinned

The titled two

had conspired

while I was looking

away at a bridge and

its tangerine promise 

of Gates stretching into 

a future of Tigers and fate

My people and memories

are gathered into papery

swaddled illusions to

unwrap and set up

in another and still

yet another high

perch

This

new rise is smaller

and befitting my heart

that quivers in air and dust

beating at sheafs and scatters

of mottled music and incense

ashes that she left in small traces

All of these were expected upon my return in the last night sighs 

of a drought ridden summer

but not in the darkness did

I foresee an awakening

to patches of sky

staring into my

room

My green canopy

now dissipated had 

swayed to me daily

that night would come

back and slip through the

panes that open to listening

stars and a watchfully setting moon

Bolts of blue tell me all is changed

by the sun now casting its beams

along what was blinded shade

pronouncing a new limned 

after from time traipsed

over and made into

Past

Matters

that no longer

matter are taken up

by the four directions of

careless winds and teasing

rains that failed for months to

pour and to drench and to soothe

The rosy dogwood points curled

brown with no suckle for bees

so now I must spring 

for a room of one's

own above tilting

evergreen

trees

                             -- © 2015 by Gilded Lily Press

Golden Gate Bridge by Night from courtesy commons