THE PRESENT

by Jennifer Grotz

It was summer, walks every day
among the vines.  I carried myself

gingerly as an overfilled cup.
Tears blurred

the shoulders of sunflowers,
dissolved the trees.

How stupid I'd been, how
slow to understand.

I know not to trust the mind
when it hurts to be alive.

I try to think with my eyes.
Every involuntary flinch

when it hurts to be alive:
just a skinny lizard

swallowed by the grass.
It was the present

but now it is the past.
The cows in the pasture

wore bells around their neck
which turned their grazing into music.

There were so few things left I could do
for him. Keep a secret was one.

The mind thinks--is it wrong?--all along--
I looked hard at the haybales

resting in the field
before being lifted away.

Jennifer Grotz is the author of four books of poems, most recently Still Falling (Graywolf Press, 2023). Also a translator, she teaches at the University of Rochester and directs the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences.