Michael Hettich


First Light


—Hurricane Helene, September 27, 2024


1.

As I walk to the kitchen in the pre-dawn near-light
I glance out the window: dark forms etched in darkness

out by the compost, just far enough away
I can’t tell at first if they’re really there.

I lean closer, squinting: shapes tumble and lie still,
wrestling and eating the scraps I dumped last night:

a family of bears—momma  and three almost
full-grown cubs. So I step out, half-dressed

and still half-asleep. There’s a garden wall between us
and I’m hardly a threat, skinny old half-naked

human that I am. I walk out into the chilly dawn
holding my breath, doing my best

to disappear. But of course they sense me anyway,
right away, and bound off through the trees

with what looks like joy, if joy is that feeling
of throwing oneself into the moment without thinking,

just losing yourself  for a while. Last night

before we turned off the light, I rubbed
Colleen’s shoulders and back with a lotion

that sometimes relieves her pain. As I rubbed
and sang softly, mostly to myself,

I could feel how her delicate bones worked to hold her
together, how fragile that scaffolding is,

and I tried to work deeper—to give her some relief,
which is almost impossible now.

All day I’d been moving branches and stones
the big storm scattered, soothing the wounds

the fallen trees left, as though I could make things
beautiful again with my human puttering.

The beauty I yearn for will come back despite me.
I pull another root ball off the path and feel

my wife’s small bones beneath my fingers.



2.

The little creek we love, that runs along the edge
of our property, has vanished under rubble,

though further down the mountain it emerges again,
singing with the same voice it had before the storm,

at least to my ears, though maybe I’m not listening
carefully enough, since the path it sings

has changed so dramatically, and all the little creatures—
salamanders, mud-puppies, and the nameless ones too—

were buried in the landslide.

Most likely my ears just aren’t built to hear
the different voices in the water as it falls

from darkness into daylight, falls toward the bigger creeks
and rivers, on into the man-made lakes

of this region, then on toward the ocean, the pulse
of tides more ancient than mountains or rivers

or even life itself as we know it, though somehow
it sings, it sings in us still.

 

Michael Hettich's most recent books of poetry are A Sharper Silence (Terrapin Books, 2025) and The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems, 1990–2022 (Press 53). He lives in Black Mountain, NC.

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