From a post in 2005. While I haven’t seen them yet this spring, I have been looking. Off this morning for a walk in one of their welcome home places.

Birthday presents from Mom

and in this dream
the giant whites returned
as they do now
every May.

i saw them first
after my mother died.
it was the strangest thing
as they brought her voice
in a long ago remembering,
‘in Elfros, near the reservoir
the pelicans stop
on their migration.

they are breathtaking

awkward and graceful
bigger than you would imagine,
we took a picnic and ate in the flat back
of the hay truck
your dad and I –
lemonade in mason jars
no talk of crops,
we watched the Pelicans
and imagined places faraway’.

now each year
on the days between
mother’s day – when i lost you,
and my birthday six days later,
– a week one year
so hard to swallow
so much sadness
it sat like hailstones
in springtime
but in that week –
the first sight
of a giant white.

i hold my breath
each time i pass the bay
from mothers day
until i see them
and then the smile
the sigh

the remembering.

how things so unrelated
can be linked forever
in my heart.

i think it might break
should one year
they pass me by.