For Spring, 2012

1st day of Spring, 2012...view of the Susquehanna from Dragonfly Cottage

{A poem written inspired by another Spring, once upon a time...}

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 Trees rise…

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 through the livingroom 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.

March journal, 1998, the 28^th

Morningside