From our place in the middle of the river of grief, the rickety raft begins to disintegrate.

Jan Haag teaches journalism and creative writing at Sacramento City College where she is the chair of the journalism department and advises student publications. She is the author of Companion Spirit, a collection of poems about her husband’s death at the age of 48, published by Amherst Writers & Artists Press. She leads writing groups in […]

From a distance I can see something’s changed – it’s half its former height, its top a jagged spear – and on the ground a massive section of trunk, its arms octopus’d as if it tried to catch itself as it fell.

I was out watering the plants in my front yard a couple months ago, trying to give them a good drink before the heat of a Sacramento August day, when Robert Gordon walked by. He was moving at his usual fast pace, paint-spattered shorts to his knees, flip-flops squishing in the water I’d inadvertently added to the sidewalk.

… the same moment the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you …
~Margaret Atwood, “The Moment”