Patience

Again today, the invitation

to fall in love with the world—

with the gray jay who flits

from empty branch to empty branch,

with the sharp scent of rabbit brush,

with the warm spring wind

and the dark buds on the crabapple

still tight with future bloom.

Some days, though the world offers itself,

it’s not so easy to fall in love—

days when heartache twists in the chest

and turns in us like a screw,

leaves us raw and sensitive, until,

too tender to hear any more bad news, 

we shutter our hearts, we close our ears.

But if we’re lucky, an inner voice

sends us outside into the day, 

and though it is gray, the world does 

what the world does—

holds us despite our heartache,

holds us the same way it holds

the stubby pink cactus, all prickly and clenched,

the same way it holds last year’s thistles,

all brittle and flat and gray, 

the same way it holds the dank scent of river

and the moldering scent of last year’s leaves, 

holds us exactly as we are

until we are ready to fall in love again. 

 —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer