Gathering Pine Cones

Below where the yellowtailed wind has come through,
beaked and seasonal, loud and crested with intention,
we stand in a panel of early coastal light, on a carpet
of amber needles. Ignoring the possum skull I hold aloft,
you proffer two cones – one sealed and green,
the other open, grey, your fingers working deep
between its weather-telling scales. You study them
in turn, as if the decision to keep or discard
were an act of balance, weight, asperity.
     I have no measure of the calm deliberations
            you bring to the earth’s found poetry.
When you say the only name you have for me,
with its rising inflection that never fails to disarm
and engage, when you offer up both cones, understanding
dies out like the nerve-ends of pine stems overhead.
Driving here, I saw how a single crow can change
harrowed, alluvial soil, giving its peaks and hollows
the shape of wind-blown, inland water. I told you this,
and you responded with your face pressed hard
into travelling glass, watching the crow fall and settle.
Now, when I ask if you can hear the waves, you turn
and point to the dunes before moving towards them,
dressed for the cold in a swagger that would be
at home on deck, on a solo cruise, in big water.
I have used the voice of a teaching man too often.

When I reach you, my hand is taken, and I lose
the need for description, breaking open, without warning,
into one part of the long preparation for our lives
– to be honest in each moment – and you go with me,
looking into or beyond me, one hand in the air,
one hand tugging at my trousers as I cry.