Thursday, February 23, 2012

New World

It's true the trees
don't speak of their wisdom
but the finches spread
a little of it around
on finally-yielding ground.

The bloom of mildew
and chartreuse moss,
young squirrels with rat tails
hold the dream of life
in their mouths.

A sparrow keeps a bare twig
like laurel in her beak
and waves it to towards the sky
to say "what can you do
for me now, sun?"

The cinquefoil
shows its own hue
of purple
distinct
from the barely perceptible

haze in the air
and gloss on the streams,
what seems a living earth's
philosophizing,
rocking the young things to re-birth,

like the gun is raised
but no plant
has jumped it,
for they know better than us
the structure of things.

The hills themselves
well up with love
and wear their green frills
like an outbreak of goosebumps;
the slow, slow logic of the universal mind

always between visible and unseen...
We make our new world
from shadows and glare
to keep it from seeming
too far away.