Of a Tree's Touch, and Other Things
Dear friends,
Starting today, I am presenting my work on a regular weekly basis, instead of in catch-as-catch-can installments. This will make it a combination of whatever I have written during the preceding week. Today that means a sonnet, a not-quite-freeform piece about the moon (only really about the earth), and two little haiku which celebrate what I have seen in the sky lately.
I hope you will enjoy this new format and its more predictable arrival!
This sonnet recalls an incident when I walked down toward our little canyon Saturday morning.
Sonnet to a Kindly Tree
I touched your leaves today. It was as though
Our fingertips had met; your life and mine
Together blended in those moments' flow.
Our souls had met, whatever the divine
Between us and within us is. Entwine
Our very lives beneath the sun and through
The storms that rise and fall and bring their wine
Of growth and flower, of green leaves that you
Held out to me. Somehow my fingers knew
Your gentleness this morning, when your touch
Renewed the sense of life within me, drew
My fragile soul to meet your comfort. Such
Our souls beneath the waking of the sun,
When your life newly through my veins may run.
I think we all know the backstory for this poem, which at its heart is about the fate of earth and its life. The mythical idea of the moon and her love takes its own form here.
Will the Moon Weep
If earth should burn,
What then would the moon do?
Light and shadow,
Sweet at once and bitter,
Silver, white.
If earth should die,
Will the moon weep her lover?
Careless of far tides
That flow and foam away,
Ocean-bright.
Gaze at the moon;
Her cold brow passionless.
Guide through the stars,
Dancing in Sun’s shadow,
Sister of night.
Nor fire nor water,
No green but endless silver.
Song and silence,
Grey ever mirrors sapphire,
Lovers’ light.
If earth should burn,
What will the moon mirror?
Only a gray love
No sapphire and no emerald
Grace her flight.
And finally, two haiku from sunset and night because the sky is so beautiful.
Two Haiku of the Sky
Brilliance of moonrise
held a few moments between
two bars of dark cloud
Bright pink cloud-wisps paint
on pale blue sky, their brush strokes
writing there, ‘Sundown’.