Cathryn Essinger
Cathryn Essinger is the author of six books of poetry–most recently, The Apricot and the Moon, and Wings, or Does the Caterpillar Dream of Flight?, both from Dos Madres press. Her sixth book Telling the Bees, will be coming from your press sometime next year. My poems have appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, Rattle, Ecotone, Terrain.org, Southern Poetry Review, Calyx and other journals. My poems have been nominated for Pushcarts and “Best of the Net,” featured on The Writer’s Almanac, and reprinted in American Life in Poetry. I live in Troy, Ohio, where I raise Monarch butterflies.
Survivor
for Becky
The pine tree that I rescued
from a crack in the sidewalk
is now twenty feet tall.
We planted it in your yard
the summer you began chemo.
I want you to know
that last year it dropped
its first pine cones
and this year it hosts
a nest of robins.
Wherever you have gone,
we are still here, amazed
by the little peach trees
that grow from seeds
planted by an ambitious
generation of squirrels.
The iris did not bloom
this year, but the peonies,
those aging ladies in pink
negligees, were beautiful.
I have not trimmed the lilacs
as I promised, but I will
once the blossoms have fallen.
In the meantime, all I can say
is that we are doing our best
to live a life worth dying for.
