Change of Elevation

When we first moved here, birds—
red-headed house finches, I believe,
a family—twittering high up

in the blue spruce that hangs
from the neighbor’s yard. You can’t see
them. The mother’s made sure of that.

This town is where I grew up. Left
at eighteen. I’ve come back. Family
is here. Mountains to the west, broad

roads I used to drive. I’ve been told
it takes two years—adaptation.
I’m impatient to get there.
Not so sure I’ll ever arrive.

The city is gone
for us. How do you grieve the sea,
the Jewish deli on the corner, cheering

from the stands with 40,000 fans,
driving the Saturday streets to lunch with
a friend? Now, three thousand feet up—

no purple jacaranda, no spindly palms,
bent to the offshore breeze. No buzz.
It’s a different kind of lovely.

First Snow

It arrives without fanfare, without drama, at dusk
on a Sunday in late November. I don’t see it come
down, catch a glimpse through a foggy window—

draping the bent fir beside the pond, brushstroke
sweep across the top of the fence that runs between
neighbors, crystalline spikes on blades of browning

grass. It’s been decades since I’ve witnessed the first
dusting of the season. It’s going to snow more in
the coming weeks, months. Winter has not even begun.

There will likely be days when I won’t be able to get out
of the driveway; below zero days with icy streets, when
I’d do anything to be in the tropics wearing a tank top

and shorts; days I’ll pull on boots, gloves, a knitted cap
and fall back into deep drifts, just to feel the penetrating
cold, like I did when I was five. Today, after a long week

of grief and sorrow, questioning what is good, what is
fair, I take it as a sign, this smattering of pebble white,
quiet soothe of it—sleep the night, know I’m still alive.

Strawberries

The metal racks in front of Bi-Mart are jam-packed with baby geraniums,
silver-leafed lavender, red, purple, and pink phlox. Succulents in starter pots:
Hens and Chicks, Turtle Shell, Donkey Tail, Blue Chalksticks. Roses, plain-Jane
shrubs, and saplings in five-gallon tubs, droop from the mountain-high heat.
I twist through the aisles, looking for plants to plug into barren spots in the beds
where perennials died off from the freezes this winter. My husband beelines
for the strawberries, plucks six of the best from a flat, places them in the cart,
stands, toe-tapping, as I round up my choices. At home he plants the strawberries
18 inches apart on a barren strip of gravel-strewn ground skirting the driveway.
After they’re in, he digs through a box of sprinkler pieces, ferreting out plastic
tubing, elbows and heads; sets up a drip system to transport water to the molded
dirt basins at the base of each plant. I sit to his right, wresting clover, dandelions
and errant fescue wedged in a short rock wall. “The deer will eat them, you know.
Strawberries are like dessert to them.” He shakes his head, “Maybe, maybe not.
I like the thought of them being here.” Brought up on a farm, where they raised
their own food; canning, curing, freezing fruits, vegetables, and meats—laying it
all in before first freeze, it’s what he knows. Drip lines are tested and deliver,
ground raked and driveway swept. Twilight has passed. From the upstairs window
I can’t quite make out the strawberries, but I know they’re there, taking root.

We lived in a flat town

in a flat house with a grizzled backyard
open to the dirt and graveled
alley, lined with banged-up
tin trashcans, knee-high weeds:
a stopover refuge for the occasional stray.
The neighbors directly to our south kept
mostly to themselves, the Hunts—
both lanky-tall, with sunbaked lips
and brows, a measured old-school countenance.
He was a lawyer. She baked latticed pies,
grew tulips, daffodils.

The day my father chopped off
the chicken’s head and its body ran
heedless, up and down the alley,
blood spouting, spewing,
and my three sisters and I
unable to utter a word in the witnessing,
Mrs. Hunt walked out her back door,
across her manicured lawn
and brought us popsicles—
handed them to us one by dripping one,
over the low-slung picket fence—
cherry-flavored; icy cold.

Originally published in Cola Literary Review.

Hari B Parisi’s (formerly Hari Bhajan Khalsa) poems have been published in numerous journals, most recently in Atlas and Alice, Paper Dragon and Poetry South. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, including She Speaks to the Birds at Night While They Sleep, winner of the 2020 Tebot Bach Clockwise Chapbook Contest. She has recently moved from the city back to her hometown in the heart of Oregon.

Image: W.carter, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons