the threads are carefully snipped
one by one.
what remains begins to fray.
the fibers spindle down
to nothing,
the weave coming apart
until it
just
disappears.
the earth still spins its dance.
the moon laughs.
the sun ever nurses
the forest floor,
the moss,
all the tendrils of life
pushing up
where forgotten fibers
brew the soil.
No matter the headlines
Earth turns as she will
breathing with the sun
the stars the moon
The universe does not ask
tides ebb and flow
leaves float on the wind
mute but for the dance
No matter the screens glow
the planet traces the unknown
with certainty
holding us, tenderly, always.
I stand before my window, gazing out into the deepening night skies, searching for that first star upon which to make my wish. There it is — winking happily at me, as if it is not beyond comprehension in its beauty and mystery. My lips move silently with my tender wish. The star listens and sparkles reassuringly. I gaze long, slowly taking in this star, and then that star, and stars beyond. Ah, look there! I see my wish as it sails on through the galaxy, blessed by all.
early evening blushes
with a deepening streak of pink
sun sinks into the earth
the glow darkens
into inky blue
there
a star comes out
then another
soon the heavens are an endless sweep
a breath
that pulls me
up up up
into the mystery
around me
inside me
i am but another star
as incomprehensibly beautiful as this boundless sky
that holds me
as I yet behold
my heart full with it
full with it
shimmering
###
Thank you to Eugie’s Causerie for inspiring this poem. The prompt to which this responds is “Gratitude.”
The birds begin to sing before the light comes. The voices reach me through the windows opened to the soft rustles and creaks of the dark hours. They pierce the magic time of furtive shadows, clear and urgent and free.
Is it song? Or is it speech? Is it utter joy? Do they call lovers, call children? Do they call me, call us, call all?
The strain oscillates through the air, an abstraction, cryptically enfolding me. The darkened space in which I lay irresistibly expands to the trees, the skies, the stars. I flutter up to the birds and sing with them the chaotic anthem of our souls. No beat, no refrain, no syncopation, no rhythm at all but we thrum with the cadence of life.
The birds begin to sing before the light comes. They sing the primal language, the one we all know. My feet and hands speak it, the tongue of the breathing earth, the pulsing star. We are all there together, for that brief moment before the sun snaps its fingers before our eyes, at the feral edges.
So dreams will have to do for now. Imagination defies the story to which we have agreed. Later, I will remember what we all know to be true, and sing again with the birds at the outer fringe of night.
earth sky air 