Poems by D.R. Goodman

Moorings

by D.R. Goodman

From Canary Winter 2020-21

D. R. lives in the Peralta Creek watershed above San Francisco Bay. From her desk she looks out over a coast live oak and a small yard owned by an aggressive male Anna’s hummingbird, but frequented by such winter visitors as Townsend’s warblers, yellow-rumped warblers, and golden-crowned sparrows.

Those things we’re moored to, like the gypsum sands
of Alamogordo, shift within a day
and leave us holding useless maps—the way
still clear in one sense: foot must step, and hands
swing forward toward the present, the demands
of live, and onward. Landmarks slip away
in drifts and dunes; surveyor’s marks decay;
our lots and lines, our walls and massive stands
of trees come down to stump and ash. What’s gone
still trails us like a broken anchor line,
heavy and weightless both, somehow—till one
cold winter, we walk out before first light,
glance up where trees should block the sky, and find
the stars are spinning paths across the night.

This poem was first published in Able Muse Review.