solstice haibun (for Wendy)

wild geese fly over:
just their voices

I love the fall but it's wrong this year. All year I've been keeping a list of what's blooming when, mostly because when my sister-- a gardener, a lover of wildflowers, a Michigander displaced to Arizona -- calls, she always asks. June 16 I write: "Japanese lilac, chestnut trees, peonies pink as monsignors, petunias sticky sweet as opium they smell like my childhood." July 8, on vacation in Ottawa, I write: "big canna lilies with designer striped leaves. There's an orange one against a peeling brick wall painted white. Petunias, petunias, petunias. The national capital has patriotic impatiens, red and white. On the drive so many black-eyed susans." It was the day she died but I didn't know it yet.

We picked wildflowers for the altar. Orange lilies, cone flower, so many black-eyed susans.

The susans bloom all season but slowly other things bloom too. August 18 there is a sprig of butter-and-eggs pressed in my notebook. I write: "wild carrot, chickory tough little buggers, daylilies. The grass is seeding." And now there's goldenrod, the soybeans turning yellow. The susans are still blooming but the trees are starting to turn. Wrong that time is moving on. Didn't it stop in the stunned heat of July? Shouldn't it? The sun goes down earlier and earlier.

the sky empties
where is my sister?