Every present thing, a ghost of something
       

Every present thing, a ghost of something

Two oaks left in the center of a farm.

I tremble with what's not there with full tenderness;
the heart holds more than its own lifetime.

A dead bird—I
told my friend not to touch it.

She cupped it in her hands,
found a place in the dirt beneath a bush. She grew up on a farm,

witnessed a calf cut, half in its mother, half out.

At home, the oak leaves' sway makes sense:
books understand me because they are made from trees.

When I hear traffic on a hike through the forest,
I think of how an ocean used to be there but now a road,

and its traffic sounds like the ocean, but how the road
cuts across a shy deer's path.

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Copyright © 2020 Rebecca Doverspike All rights reserved
from Every Present Thing a Ghost
Slapering Hol Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission