Scimitar

A magpie squawks at the top of a blue spruce,

while white-winged doves coo back and forth

across the orchard. Today I did not hike

into a rainforest and forage for a glowing

neon-green mushroom; I did not fly

to New Guinea to catch birdwing butterflies;

instead I hiked a trail across patches of snow

and, scratching the trunk of a ponderosa pine,

inhaled a vanilla scent. I strolled in the orchard

and spotted a magpie nest in an apple tree,

marveled at wisps of clouds like branching red coral

in the sea; near the scimitar of a moon,

Venus shimmered. As clouds above the horizon

incarnadined, I shoveled snow onto

a strawberry bed; then a dove cooed—on a day

when I did nothing but search myself

and steep in each minute of the deepening indigo sky,

I suddenly had somewhere everywhere to be.

Source: Poetry (December 2025)