Tacoma

Maggie Flaherty

On the side of a Lutheran church,

a dozen dahlias: five purpled heads,

              seven rusty reds on spindled stems.

                      In the corner, against rough brick

              and crumbled mortar, a few ragged

      sports lift yellow spikes—stamened

 

pikes thrust from yellow moats

        and parched leaves. Hidden there,

                    two old bees, dinged wings back,

 

                        drag rear legs, hair combs laden

            with pollen for the Queen’s half-dead

    entourage. Why am I squatting here,

 

triaging dahlias? Far off, fires burn.

        Cascades’ canyons crisp and curl.

                    This very morning, I looked for

 

                                Mt. Rainier’s snowy stinger

                    pricking the line between sky

        and firs that ascend the mountain’s

 

flanks in search of melt. Or so

        I imagine, my lungs catching

                    on cinder fragments cloaking

 

                            the mountain view, choking

                my sore villi, like bees’ legs

        atremble in a thickness

 

hard to describe; air so

        heavy only short words

                    escape, nearly breathless:

                                Awake! Awake! The closer

                    I look, the more I see this earth—

        this present moment—burning.

 

Where’s a gust of healing rain,

        a soothing wind that lifts

                   or sets us down gently?


Photograph of the poet Maggie Flaherty

About the author

Maggie Flaherty began writing poems in high school but stopped for a busy 50 years or so. In 2016, after retiring, she attended a workshop taught by the poet and essayist Lia Purpura at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. There, her interest in poetry returned like a homing pigeon. In 2020, she graduated from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University with a masters in poetry. These days, she works in the garden or watches the birds. That’s where many of her poems begin: in the always-changing weather.