“tell me if it’s raining”

tell me if it's raining. tell me why there are fiddleheads in august

when they're supposed to come in spring. explain to me which

violets to eat, when the best low bush blueberries bloom

round beauty below these trees. tell me what you ate today.

did you bake that lightly smoked black cod with the sea

asparagus, coating it with spruce tip syrup and that ancient

clover honey, topping it with chunks of sea salt

and saving the leftovers for breakfast?

tell me if you dreamed. tell me which fish you caught,

and if you made the hook yourself, what color it was, if it had

a feather. tell me about the sun cups in the snow field, why

some of the cracks glow blue, and the top layer

is stained red. let me know

what time the sun will set, if the phosphorescence

was out when you last jumped in the ocean, or waded in deeper,

over barnacle coated rocks at low tide after dinner and dishes.

tell me if you watched

the river, thick with salmon, bubble white water, as you threw

pieces of licorice fern under the current from the gravel bed.

tell me if any of it stuck with you,

if the food lived after consumption, if you still

have the pigment of yellow monkey flower in the well of

your palm, or the song of murrelets in the canal of your

ear, maybe even the spout of a sperm whale reflecting on the shine

iris of your eye. tell me if you wrote any of it down, named

the plants lining the deer trail or peaks carving the ridge.

let me know if you feel sad now

for not holding onto all of it at once,

but instead, slowly, letting little bits of it slip back

into the river.

don't tell me about the permanence

of ideas, of da Vinci’s smile, or dickinson's birds,

or the continuum of violence and the improbability of

love. tell me only the colors

of your universe, which ones pool and splash

behind your lids when you squeeze them shut,

which ones blend into the blurred horizon of

a sea sky, which ones fill your plate before

it is white and empty again.

paint it once, and i won't ask you any more,

until tomorrow, when i tell you

what i did today, when i translate

my electric blues and fuzzy greys, when i try to

hold tight to the magic of existence

in a world that expands every time

i touch it. 

dls