Spring Rain.
When you don't clap, I'm going to start to worry then.
Now the rain is falling freshly in the intervals
between sunlight.
A Pacific squall started, no one knows
where, drawn west as the drifts of warm air make a channel.
It moves its own way like water or the mind
and spills this rain passing over.
The Sierras will catch it as the last snow flurries
before summer, observed only by the wakened
marmots at 10,000 feet.
And we will come across it again as larkspur and penstemon
sprouting along a creek side above Sonora Pass next August.
That's not the end of it.
The gray jays of the mountains eat larkspur seeds which cannot
propagate otherwise.
To simulate the process, you have
to soak gathered seeds all night in the acids of old coffee
and then score them gently with a very sharp knife
before you plant them in the garden.
You might use what was left of the coffee we drank
in Lisa's kitchen, visiting.
There were orange poppies on a table in a clear glass
vase stained near the bottom to the color of sunrise.
The unstated theme was the blessedness of gathering
and the blessing of dispersal.
It made you glad for beauty like that, casual and intense,
lasting as long as the poppies last.
And for kitchens and friends and fresh starts.
James had never seen the coast before.
Carol was leaving for England.