The Gift
for Kale Kim
I unfolded the paper then refolded it
to its bird’s shape,
marveled at the simplicity,
the cutout
the fold.
I tried to understand. Why this?
A paper printed with words torn
from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night?
I read the entire scene to find clues.
When I let it be a question
with wings and sprinkled with glitter,
I placed it somewhere I would see it
everyday.
It nests now in the tiny crevasse
between frame and glass of a photograph
of my father smiling,
his arms filled with flowers.
When I was a Child My Bedroom Window Faced the Apple Trees
An apple tree, heavy with fruit, touches the glass.
Sometimes, the cat would climb, jump from branch
to dormer, paw at the screen to be let in.
In spring, these three trees are full
of white stars. I loved those trees and
the wormy fruit they produced. Loved
the long-handled basket my grandfather built
for picking the highest fruit.
Loved the smell of apples rotting on the ground,
hidden by un-mowed grass.
Loved the beehives and the honey.
The dripping sweetness on the comb
dipped into jars my grandfather filled
in the mud cellar. Each 5-pointed blossom –
Venus in hiding. Flowers to wrinkled filaments
to calyx, to stem connected to branch,
to trees rooted in hillside, in love
with the bees, in love with its own falling fruit.
In love with the cat climbing the tree.
Cheryl Waitkevich is a retired nurse practitioner who spent the bulk of her career working with people in hospice and palliative care. She is married to a classically trained pianist who has taught her the power of focusing on the things that bring you life so she started writing poetry again. She is currently enrolled in the Rainier’s Writers Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. They have a son and daughter-in-law who gave them the best gift ever; a grandchild who now is 19 months old and when not spending time with the grandbaby, Cheryl likes to spend her time writing and observing the world around her. Even when she spends time with the baby, to be honest. She is an avid walker and cold water plunger, a love she learned from a dear friend who lives in Ireland. She has had several poems published and is currently piecing together her first chapbook.