when I was a young child

when I was a young child,

unconsciously I felt pressure

that at some point as an adult

I would have to make sense of

the grain patterns in plywood.

I remember this now, suddenly,

at 47, the age my mother was

when she first got cancer —

which she seemingly defeated

then and for seven years after,

before it returned all over

and killed her in three months —

as I sit in the waiting room

of a medical clinic in seattle

looking around until jeni returns

from a routine check-up

and noticing the narrow whorl

on the edge of a long, polished

piece of plywood placed

like an ornamental awning

above the reception counter.

earlier in the day, I had walked

from jeni’s to downtown olympia

to deposit a check at wsecu

and get a latté, but also to

meander around absorbing

the beauty of the world

and hopefully pausing

to get a good poem started.

frustratingly, though, I didn’t

jot down a single phrase,

despite admiring the colors

of the deciduous trees on eighth

and elsewhere along my walk.

partially, this was because I was

distracted by how cold it was,

suddenly, after our long summer,

so much so that I hustled along,

hands in jeans pockets

like an early dylan album cover,

but worrying that my toes,

rubbing against thin socks

in rigid vinyl boots, might get

bad chilblains as in winters past.

mostly, though, it was because

to my disappointment,

I could only think of clichés

to describe the marvelous sights

I saw swirling all around me,

or else phrasings so unique

they circled all the way back

to being clunky and distracting,

like that the gauntlet of leaves

strewn on the street and still

shivering on branches above me

looked like the mess of paper bits

I cover my coffee table with

before I begin arranging them

together into a new collage.

everything gets written right

eventually, though, so walk on

past the point where it could’ve

been jotted down — past the age

your mother first felt mortal,

past the age you first felt

eternal enigmas tease insight —

and on back to the point

where all small patterns say:

it’s big of you to love today.