Strange How You Stay

Strange how you may stay in one place—
Say a house facing a stand of alders—
and yet are carried forward,

stay in one place but not in that time,
not in the years that meant so much to you,
that were your happiest years,

how you are helplessly carried onward.

It has come hard to me, this knowledge,
I have had to practice to do it—

to swallow silently the losses while I hold close
what the heart has claimed.

Now the trees have entered their winter silence.
In the garden, one foolhardy yellow rose
Is blooming still.

Dorothy Trogdon has lived on Orcas Island since 1985.  Previously she and her family lived in Spokane for 25 years.  “Strange How You Stay” is from her first full collection, Tall Woman Looking, published by Blue Begonia Press this month.