EMILY WOLAHAN
THE WAY WILDERNESS CURIOUSLY BENDS ALONG
The committed leap of the small dog
to the wall, then a polite probe
into my lap. The dog licks me, rubs
its wet nose all over my knee. I allow it,
its owner at my side. Yesterday a road
became a silver fish bearing down on us, fishy,
scaled, ever searching—migrant thinking
coming at me. I have lived in this city
four years and nine months, though it has come
to feel less important to count time.
There is still so much to do.
A skunk waddles to shelter. We expect
goats in the field across from us
in summer. My child holds his tongue
between pursed lips while he tests
his hands. Are they strong enough
to fully snap the closure he holds?
They are not. Yet.
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*** ** ***
THE LANDSCAPE UNFOLDS BEFORE HIM
Creeping cotilda ground cover
reaches the edge of its pot
and begins to spill over. He doesn’t get
his way and folds a bit downward.
He can be lifted up by two hands
around his chest. On the fallen
oak trunk, he shimmies out
and loops a string around a burl
thinking that with it
he can hold the entire thing
together. I watch an adult friend coax
him down since the trunk’s balancing
on the rounded edge of a smaller stump
and rocking with his weight.
He walks toward me, reaches out
for my extended hand. We are on a hill.
We look out over our city neighborhood.
Can we find our house? This involves
several minutes of discussion.
The wild oat is high and nearly ready to seed.
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*** ** ***
VIEWS TERMINATING AT ALL TIMES IN GREENERY
To resist words, all of them, and discover
a turn in the street carved
into the side of a hill, bisected
so northbound runs low
against a high retaining wall of ivy,
while southbound perched above glimpses
the ocean. An afternoon
without metonymy. A walk through
the rambling city park. A blanket
laid just off the path struck out in
a pine grove uphill from
a golf course. Two children.
Each wants a chance
to throw an apple core into
the underbrush. Each wants to lay
down and look at the sky
through the canopy. Two apples.
An airplane bisects the scene.
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*** ** ***
CREATING WITHOUT FEAR
Shallow colors and in one stroke
a bright register—
the evening sun over the valley
of packed-in low houses,
flashes on a window that could be a signal
to me—wake up. I have come to collect
the children. Wake up. There’s a puddle
I cross in canvas shoes. There’s a neighbor
to acknowledge. I can collect
myself. Each step back into life—enter.
The translucent space of direct sun
through the eucalyptus. The squeal
of a child running, looking behind him,
hoping he’s being chased.
It’s hard not to stay.
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*** ** ***
SOURGRASS
Light hits every leaf vein, neon-yellow petals
shadow each other. It comes every year,
the sourgrass taking over, yellow flowers, ternate
leaves, nothing at all like grass. My kids pick one each,
gnaw the stem, saying it won’t kill them.
But something is coming for us, in the wind
rushing off the Pacific, over the low hills and past.
It will brush bare things we know, polishing them down
to what we ought to. We approached
the problem. Established an erosive governance,
the move to California, the ever-sought
day-to-day of citrus, pine, pelican,
now not a thing I feel I deserve.
I sit, chilled, as the light on our hedge becomes
an entire landscape. Can’t I at least keep that? Didn’t I pull
two poems from the magazine and wasn’t it their take
on abundant lemon trees that won me over? Turns out
we have too many—what we can’t give away, rots.
My kids say, it won’t kill them.
They throw the dusty citrus against the fence,
pale gray marks. They create miniature houses,
fill them with food that won’t kill the miniature
beings inside and check them every week
for growth. My kids jump from the top step
to the concrete sidewalk, screaming, This won’t
either! I’m told that sourgrass is pickle grass
is yellow woodsorrel is oxalis stricta and will be gone
by April. I’m asked to come and sit in the weed,
chew the stem. Join the children eating it.
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EMILY WOLAHAN
Emily Wolahan lives in San Francisco. She is the author of the poetry collection Hinge (2015). Her poetry has appeared in the Boston Review, the Georgia Review, Oversound, and many other publications. Her prose can be found in Arts & Letters, Among Margins (Ricochet Editions, 2016), and The New Inquiry.
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A Dozen Nothing 