✨ Lately, when I awake desolate

10,000 golden fans...

Lately, when I awake desolate

feeling half-swamped
by runaway currents I name—
dread, for my children, and theirs,
and this planet—I backstroke
through time to rest my palms
against the delicate skin
of the gingko tree, the one
and only, in my home town.
Rooted in siltish sand,
come autumn, it flaunted
10,000 golden fans:
a waving descendant my uncle said,
of the oldest tree
to inhabit the earth. Memory
replays three fluting sighs
of a mourning dove, high in the canopy,
that vast fretwork alive again
with rustling endearments—yet
ghostly, too, as his unseen hand
almost rocks my skiff of a self.

—Laurie Klein

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“Lately, when I awake desolate” is from House of 49 Doors, Cascade Books, © 2024. Used by permission of the poet. Photo by yamasa-n, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.