Martha Silano

What I’ll Miss

Prob won’t be sycamores, a childhood of nesting robins,
peeling bark. Will it be the bald cypresses at Corkscrew Swamp, 
the last three miles of a 30-mile swath saved from chopping and draining,  

conversion to crop or pasture use? I know I’ll def miss 
the return of the swallows to Seattle on or about March 18th, 
the violet-greens, their acrobatic flights along and across the lake. 

Also, though I don’t love the smell it burrows into my fleece, 
the flames of a campfire along the Tieton, though let’s skip the s’mores. 
I’ll miss walking, I think, unless what we do without bodies is more like a kestrel 

in a dragonfly divebomb. If we fly, 
and I think we will, I’ll have to go back to that suburb 
outside Townsville to revisit the duck-billed platypus who showed up 

on our final morning while I was washing our sleeping bags 
in our world-peace hosts’ front loader, preparing for four more months 
of hostels, bamboo huts, and pull-out couches. Do I have to say I won’t miss

tooth or hair care, those days the AQI nudged past 300, 
the mornings of building towers out of yogurt and ricotta containers 
when I would’ve much rather been jogging, swimming, or lying in a hammock?  

Yes, yes, we will all fly, and the years flew 
like a crested caracara just before the turn off to the last old growth stand 
of bald cypress in the world. Yes, yes, the word is caress, and I will miss doing it 

with you, and also monkeys and featherless chicks, 
owls right before they upchuck this thing called a pellet—
the bones and the fur, which I also plan to savor, the gristle 

and the chewy fat, the parts my father ate 
so my sister and I could have the filet mignon, 
which I sort of did the same for my kids (?), those nestlings 

who fledged, those neotropical migrants who landed 
on 33rd Avenue South, with their many markings – confusing 
stripes, eye-rings, and so many permutations of yellow throats. 

Orders of Operation

First thing, my hair began to weep. Wept like sea oats, the roots of which 
are forty feet deep. First thing, my torso quivered like mud 
in a 192-mile-an-hour wind. Like a seed head 

in a Category 6, its vibrating underground rhizomes. One night, 
in my bathroom mirror, I thought I saw my heartbeat 
in my bicep. What was that quote 

about a bitter heart? In the desert, I saw a creature, naked, bestial …
A naked, bestial creature eating his bitter heart.  What a wild image, 
right? Liking the bitter taste Because it is bitter, the way an osprey 
 
must love the taste of salt on its mouth as it dives for a fish,
succeeds. It must know that feeling of victory, of settling 
into a palmetto, or perching at the top of a building

to feast. After a while, I listened with my eyebrows. After a while, 
I listened to the sunlight in my pectorals and glutes, 
the non-noise of sleep, which made me anxious. 

And ahhh, what was this thing with my voice, why was it getting harder 
to swallow and speak?  When I googled, I found hideous things.
To lightly fly away, like a rosy maple moth. Slowly, 

but not too slow. To flutter in the key of yellow and pink, 
without coughing or wheezing, 
without a bat-like resistance. 

To go without weeping or creaking, without too much hoopla, 
like these little precious creamy-white wings, 
like these rosy-pink markings 

on the margins and bases, which do a kind of breezy,
like oat grass, which does a little able flying, 
then slows down so lightly, so lovely. 

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I began working on “What I’ll Miss” a few years ago. I forgot I’d written it, then came across it in my UNFINISHED folder during a poem-a-day marathon in February 2024. It floored me to find I was working on a “When I’m Gone” poem before I’d been diagnosed with ALS. How uncanny! This poem underwent a major rehaul. I was in Florida as I revised, so I had to add some Floridian wildlife. But it’s my family I’ll miss the most. “Orders of Operation” is totally inspired by a daytrip my partner and I took to San Marco Island, near Naples, Florida—the sea oats and the rosy maple moth, plus, yeah, a big nod to Hart Crane. Both poems address the issue of being impermanent in bodily form on this wild and wondrous planet we all live on.

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