Dukkha

I found myself apologizing to the peaches again today,
the green ones I found on the ground,
near the coneflower that could never make it to bud -

After the hail, and the late snow, and my
intermittent neglect,somehow they arrived intact
to midsummer, and hope -

But the neighbor’s baby would not stop crying,
and Charlie, clumsy and filled with
slobbering love, rightfully concerned

bolted and shook the branch with his worry –
You tried so hard, I told them,
holding their newborn skin for a moment

like a blessing
before tossing them
into the bin of weeds, and grass, and rocks –

You have to be tough to make it here, and stubborn
You have to know how to be stepped on by children,
choked by crabgrass, assaulted by falling stones

shot-loose when it’s not just
babies crying, but the taunting squirrel, or worse, bunny
and not forget who you are, or

the life you have come to make –
or, when my son,
filled with hormones and resentment

slices clean off all the parts you had hoped to offer
to butterflies, and hummingbirds, and the sky -
the orange parts, the yellow, the red –

all the fire you’d been storing up –
when there is nothing impressive left,
you have to be ready to take that heartbreak

and keep going,
patient and undeterred –
there can be no pride here

only endurance,
which is to give everything away
except your roots, and the earth

which holds you, and everything else,
in what cannot be seen, or undone
forgetting even grief, though well-earned

and know the struggle itself is worthy,
to go on inhaling, and exhaling
equal, and enough

.