Dear Betty
by Kika Dorsey

My friend, the leaves are turning
and the squirrels forage for nuts.
We talk about our husbands,
the way they bombard us with news
when all we want
is the apple free from worms
from the aging tree
that still bears fruit
as we do,
not of flesh but thought,
not the children we have brought
into this fraught world,
how we say we heard the thunder
even when now the skies are blue,
how we say not me, you
in our listening.
They say squirrels’ brains
get bigger in autumn,
maybe to remember
where they hid the nuts
in their seasonal foraging.
I like to watch
how they tease my dogs,
how they build a nest
in the honey locust,
now shedding its small leaves
the color of peaches.
I was never a genius,
my memory a filter
sweeping over the river’s floor
to look for gold.
The way of every moment
disappears like rain
unless it floods again.
Those were hard times.
We don’t talk about them.
A squirrel scurries and leaps.
The day quietly comes to an end.
No thunderous applause
or pots of gold
or finished nest.
Sometimes it seems
all our life is a beginning,
a hook to bring us
into the story
of what we remember,
what we forget.



 

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