Gold Rush

 

This scent, this soft

sweater, both lavender,

on my skin.

 

I don’t know

where I got them—just picked them up

somewhere on the journey—gifts

 

along this path of stones

with sun, partly obscured, glinting

off miles of crushed fool’s gold—

 

my eyes squinting

in the dark

until the true rush—

treasure, shining.

 

This scent mingles

with memories of breast milk

on my babies’ breath,

 

fresh soap on their skin—

and that old quilt

from when I was young.

 

I wish I had it here now.

Purple, storied, some patches

tearing away.

 

I’d lay it down,

drink the wine of your lips,

pull our stories around us,

fool’s gold abandoned—

 

as our children are tearing away,

the lights of their own stories—

quilts unfolding.

 

Us, gold, rich.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

What’s Going On?  Light

 

As a mother, nothing delights me more than seeing my sons thrive and follow their dreams.  This year is a big one for each of them with significant upcoming milestones.  What’s best is they all have such good hearts.  True gold.  I am overwhelmed with gratitude to see who they are becoming as men, as lights.

 

Coyote

 

Today I write poems.

The hard ones.

The worst and best to write.

 

Regret at how I hurt you

as you were so little

while my fears were so big

and so looming.

 

I am sorry.

I am fool enough to think

these words may be enough.

 

Looking out the window

at the fog that got us both,

I know this is how you, feel, too—

lost, unseeing.

 

I don’t know when you will understand

and shake off your winter coat

and run, orange fur escaping into the sun

and meadows I kept you from.

Go now, I pray.

 

Your bruisings I will hold in my heart, I hope,

if allowed,

so you may be free

 

from this tumbleweed field

where I birthed you,

where my eyelashes are becoming weighted down

by dust.

 

Go, go, and remember the best of us.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

Surface Roots, Falling Leaves

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

The arms and hands

of my grandfathers, grandmothers—

 

the gnarled roots—

my history

 

a map on the earth

I step over

 

so as not to disturb them, leave them

as they are, unmarred by my boots.

                                                              

I’ve tried to clear them

so widely,

 

intending to be unencumbered

by what held them, too.

 

In my youth

I believed it could be so.

 

But now

I have walked a mile or two,

 

or how ever many thousands,

and my feet ache

 

with the heaviness

of trying.

 

The tripping, the falling,

the climbing back up.

 

But these I’ve been given

have led me to see,

 

and to sit basking

in the whispering of paper-thin leaves

 

teaching me how

to speak gently to myself

 

of forgiveness,

even more now my own necessity.

 

Because I am what I am

made of,

 

and my own stories

will fall, I hope,

 

like a gentle covering

for those who walk after me.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

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