Alchemy

by Ashley Mace Havird

Spring 2020, Pandemic, Caddo Parish, Louisiana

I was walking the dog

when overhead a live oak shook.

A hawk lurched to the nearest roof,

dangling a fat limp squirrel. Its talons 

kneaded the grey fur. In its glare: “Go home.

Stay there.” This was March,

Mardi Gras barely past. Costumes,

beads, feathered masks stored 

for the sober, hungry days of Lent, 

which coincide with the outbreak of spring: 

explosion of pollen, azaleas on parade, 

the sudden manic Louisiana green. 

April brought floods, tornadoes, hail

that shattered windows, broke records.

With May’s sun, masks that return us 

to fasting, that distance us. 

And I begin to find near things, 

which I’d forgotten were lost—songs, 

for instance, had as a child by heart:

the jay’s scolding, the sparrow’s caprice. 

I track the red dash of chittering, 

nest-building cardinals. Flinch 

as the wailing kites glide low. 

The candles in my neighbor’s magnolia—

the one that all year sheds

leathery leaves over the fence—

open into a hundred white birds. 

Shade like the laying on of hands. 

Perfume thick as cathedral incense. 

Speaking of cathedrals, I found

faith enough to plant bulbs, ugly things 

like bristly fists. In rotting leaves,

fall’s leavings, the alchemy  

of ants, slugs, earthworms. Ironic, 

the nearness within separations,

recognition beneath strangeness,

feasts amid fasting. … Bees swarmed 

a friend’s eave. A beekeeper pried off the boards, 

tugged loose the combs. Honey poured 

and poured. Bucketsful. 

It looked, she marveled, my distant friend, 

as though it would never stop.