...Trees Rise...

(a poem to welcome Spring)

Stars tangle in the night-black branches of the soft maple rising
impossibly high against the mellow night’s light-pricked ebony velvet—
Orion, leaping ahead of the winter-born Saggittarius, is now caught by early dark. In January’s bejeweled & frozen skies, the chase lasted until mid-night.

I sail off upon this star-current, trusting its familiar passage, following
night-flighted birds heading homeward…the Wheel lumbering us all along
with its gentle rounding-rhythm.

So we see the night through…
Birds alight to sleep…
I arise, summoned by quiet yet such insistent urgings…

Trees rise from mist-riddled bottom lands which resound and echo
with the calls of birds exulting
in the growing light & warmth of the year;
the Earth slowly spinning Her way into Spring.

We trust to growth, to life re-inventing itself…
to the oozing, leaf-mold muck yielding its verdant promises….sap-Rising.

I gather hands-full of Dawnlight spilling in through the living-room windows,
stirring and drawing up these hidden energy-currents,
hooking into this shifting, vital force
– tidal vibrance, as subtle, as constant as the waxing & waning of the Moon –
and as reliable,
despite the illusion of its silver crescent
to make us think the whole of its celestial body
has been consumed by a nameless darkness.

inspired by a journal entry
28th March, 1998
at Morningside