Someday I hope my granddaughter remembers
how we got up before everyone else and went out
into the frosty morning in our pajamas. I hope she remembers
how she, hugging her stuffed mouse, and I, hugging the red oak,
faced east, all four of us, our faces bathed in sunrise.
crow call
through the black branches
morning
Someday, when she’s watching another sunrise, if she needs it,
I hope this memory will also rise—of the morning when
she was seven years old, just entering the age of reason,
when her grandmother sang a made-up song
and shook her body and stomped on the earth to thank
the underground threads of the mycelial network
for stitching us into their nurturing economy.
winter grass
beneath our feet
the roots
The long shadow of Covid. My granddaughter says
I’m learning how to live with what we don’t understand.
Out of the mouth of babes and don’t you forget it, my child.
Don’t forget this cold, startling moment—how we were held,
how the morning received us, how trees were our people,
and how there are many ways to heal. Don’t forget the silliness, the
sacredness, the dead seriousness of dancing barefoot on the frozen earth.
And don’t forget how your grandmother, with so few coins in her
sprightliness account, squandered them all on the sunrise.
veins
in the fallen oak leaf
in my outstretched hand
—
Holli Rainwater is the co-author with Robin Mullet of The Curve of Her Arm, a collaboration of free verse and haiku on the art and practice of qigong (Night Ballet Press, 2019). Holli is a member of the Ohio Poetry Association and the Haiku Society of America. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies and haiku journals, including Frogpond, Presence, Haibun Today, Heron’s Nest, Kingfisher, Mayfly, Wild Plum, Wales Haiku Journal and Modern Haiku.
