Animation Like a Comforter

This is my special time

for sadness, ripe summer

when trees toss their hair

like casual schoolgirls, but stand

otherwise still for decades.

Can trees hear the promise

of wind, a cool unseen assurance

for feckless flowers, for fruit

full on the vine? Oh the world

is full of secrets.

Crows jeer no matter the season.

I hear them laugh every morning,

and they’ll be fat as plums on the snow
when this yielding ground is frozen
and branches are thin as whips.

I toss my hair and flutter my fingers,

but otherwise sit by the window.

I don’t pretend to hold sovereignty

over grass or snow: I belong no more

or less than they. I make families 

of squirrels, crows, pine trees,

dragonflies, geraniums, nothing

like people, but I animate them

with imagination to feel something

I can see: an uncle in the forsythia brush,
grandfather's shadow in slanting afternoon.

I’ve been meaning to tell you

that the sky is closer to the ground here.

It's  brighter. Clouds have more dimension.

I've been meaning to tell you, but I don't

know who you are, and you're fleeting

as butterfly wings and dandelion fluff.

When the moon rises I wait

for my imagination to quicken stars,

make something whisper my name.

I gather my tears in the palm of my hand

and pretend they're grandfather's.  

I fly to stars and we comfort him

with laughter. I say we are some kind

of family to whatever might be listening.
 

Reviews

[Tim McGovern]

"fat as plums on the snow" is a great line
so clear, so true, and so funny.

I love this poem for so many reasons, but mostly because i know how nature is where you are, how it gets inside you, and because i know someday i will be that grandfather that someone looks to the stars and comforts.

beautiful work shemeh
namaste
tim

[Toni Prehoda Kahler]

I feel your first line all over my heart as I read. This is tender, this is gorgeous in its imagry and imagination, in its emotion. You took me so close to your visual world, you surprised me (I love that) and carried me along. You use your words effortlessly, it feels that way as I read, I ride those words and don't want to get off. ("Oh the world is full of secrets") I was caught up intensely, this is terrific writing. I sit with the image of you tossing your hair, you and the trees, and as you gather your tears I feel my own, and I fly with you, feeling the width and breadth of where you have taken me.
Really lovely write.

[Tara]

I love your use of the elemental here. That last stanza describes so perfectly the anticipation of night, I love that first line of the last stanza. I also love the narrative conversational style you use here and I also really like the way the "trees toss their hair like casual schoolgirls". Excellent writing, Shara.

[Denny]

This reads as a Maine poem, but to New York people. You still paint home with the ease as always. I love this the way this ties your world together. The same rhythm that flows into the cracks and colors the world of those that read your work. God I can be smooth, but not as smooth as you. Really a nice poem that was a joy to read, nice outside walk.