Laura Jan Shore Biography

Outside my window, the you-you-you
of mourning doves and I wake, bewildered.
The redwoods hold each other up
below the soil, intertwined.

On your side of the bed I’ve spread
a felled tree’s worth of poetry.
The mulch of memory.

Your stopped breath still
saturates my lungs.
In the night, the moans that startle me
are my own.

Each room where you are not,
your things imprinted with your touch,
I gather into piles to give away or toss.

I carry that spark
my heartwood.
Where do our high-voltage fingers
find each other in the dark?