I spent the morning by the window, feet on the heater, the New and Collected Poems of Czeslaw Milosz on my lap. I paused after "The Journey" and watched the mountain ash waving in the breeze. I saw nothing "pure-colored" as Milosz would have it. Nothing impure either. Not a bird clung to its branches. Just leaves.
The tree needs trimming. Badly. We say so every time we back into the yard. It's at the end of the driveway and has grown so much it now brushes the car as we come and go. I should take my shears to it, but a mountain ash has a certain symmetry that I fear I'll destroy. Today's not the day for it.
I turned back to the book and realized then, after all this time, that I did not know how to pronounce his name. It felt wrong to read any further. I searched online until I found an audio clip called "Requiem for a Poet: Czeslaw Milosz." And as the tree waved I heard his name. I heard him speak. Still not a bird.
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