This next poem is called "Dawn Redwood",
and the last line of the poem is from a poem by CD Wright.
And that poem of hers was called "Floating Trees."
And this was the last time I saw a CD Wright
in Providence, Rhode Island.
Early morning light, a young red-tailed hawk
glided onto an overhead branch and peered down at me.
But it did not look with your eyes.
A battered and rusted pickup up lies in the wash.
Navajo tea buds on the trail.
I headed back and checked in the boiler room
the traps baited with peanut butter.
Now a gnat flits against this lit screen.
Where are you now?
One morning we walked in a Rhode Island cemetery
and did not look at a single gravestone.
We looked at 100-year-old copper beaches,
cells burnished purple, soaking up sunshine,
and talked about the dawn redwood.
How the glimmering light at the beginning of the world
was in all things.
This morning, in the pre-dawn darkness,
Orion angled in the eastern sky with Sirius
low above the ridgeline.
And before daylight blotted out the stars,
I heard you speak, the scratched words return to their sleeves.