Every Other Days' When

It was going to be a Sunday in San Diego.

When the jacaranda blooming against whitewashed plaster

leaned purple down to be seen

When Anna’s Hummingbird buzzed the ridgelinein search of a still sweeter Cuphea

to trace the arc of a more perfect thirst

When April relieved March of disconsolate duty

and unbidden roadside sprigs of pink and yellow Ranunculus opened

so irresponsibly so naked with anticipation

that tomes of nature poems would go unwritten

When Ann, Kally, Jen, Mary collected you and crushed grapes

from Sonoma, Jamesport, Coqiumbo, Tuscany

Bordeaux, Granada, Coonawarra, & Breede River Valley

metabolized into crystalline story-sparks

to curtain unjust tests of your moment

in a synchrony of cuisine & merriment,

like Cú Chulainn tied to a standing stone

anointed by a small counterforce of nature --

that eddying of how and when you were loved.

When instead

we are somehow to resist the weight

of every other day without you.

for Barbara

2 April 2015