Start any time so long as it’s the last
of May, the first of June—and morning, please
when the hillside listens for your footfall, and shadows tease
each hollow in the rock with dreams of the night just past.
Best to set a slow and even pace—
whatever you thought you’d come for falls away
in shafts of light that stipple the grass-tips, lay
the lower meadows with a yellow lace
and when, at the top, you come to the serpentine,
slow down awhile—the flower will appear,
the one that blooms now only and only here.
Stand still. Breathe. The lily will lean
out to you alone—color of spun
grass, color of rock, color of sun.
Jacqueline Kudler
Jacqueline Kudler lives in Sausalito, California and teaches classes in memoir writing and literature at the College of Marin in Kentfield. Her poems have appeared in numerous reviews, magazines, and anthologies. Her first full length poetry collection, Sacred Precinct, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press, San Francisco, in 2003; her second, Easing into Dark, in 2012. She was awarded the Marin Arts Council Board Award in 2005, and the Marin Poetry Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.