They don’t notice us those trees                     

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A footfall on the stair startles little russet gecko,

tiny cactus flowers cling to dry earth

green lingers on desert bushes for a few more weeks

before the return of aridness to this rustling slope to the sea.

 

It is the same as last year only newly alive

in the cycle of another fleeting year on a calendar,

but lyrical canyon wren visiting the railing every day

searches for insects not dates, woodpecker doesn’t care about the hour.

 

Mountain abides each day into the next, changed by sun,

dressed by rain not by caution, sea wends its twice daily way

washing out old, pushing new into shallows of these sacred shores,

silver flash fish don’t ask permission to flow by in a liquid rush.

 

Sudden voices are of no concern to nightsnake curled in a tangle of weed,

each nameless season is not counted by shy fox discreet in the night,

flies and carpenter bees know to detour around the houses,

pipe cactus doesn’t worry about who builds nests to its left, to its right.

 

Dawn bows into morning on mountain’s green bushes and incoming tide, and

slowly floods into full daylight because that’s the way of it not because its time.

And we, we are just other beings among many members of this pulsing realm

even if we cannot always remember our true places here.

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© Sharon Mooney, “They don't notice us those trees”, in Galway Review, a literary magazine, ed Máire Holmes, December 2020, NUI Galway Academic Press, Galway IR, https://thegalwayreview.com/2020/12/22/sharon-lopez-mooney-two-poems/