Catherine’s Landscape Between Us, Poem

We light the fire. A cat jumps through the air.
The tress bend closer to hear us.

Sometimes inside the fire I see your porch light.

When I hear his bark, I know to let the dog inside.
Five feathers on the door mat means someone has died.

I still think about the footprints in the snow,
how they filled, then were erased.
At the river the great blue heron
leaves tracks in the mud.

We travel many miles to be together.

Sometimes there is no message.
Sometimes the tress are so busy telling us
everything we can’t take it in. I write
to you from a hundred years ago.

You write me from the future.
The ravens fly between us sewing together
time and light.
I have not yet asked you what you dream.

Do you love your sleep? Some days
we love the hard earth and its spiny plants,
dark shadows fanning out from elephantine rocks,
and the light on the south facing slopes.

We share an afternoon, a fire, then night.
Mostly it is enough.

Catherine Ferguson.