Before my window
Agreeably
There paused a green-skirted evergreen tree.So still she stands
Till I ponder what cause
To her flickering progress dictated pause (declared a pause).And distressed find
Each lower bough
Descending into a pool of snow.Snow ledging her eyebrows
Her frosty vision
Has charted the way from here with precision.
Trees walking are deliberate
More, say, than humankind
Our feet pace by to be in turn
Bypassed by mind.
Trees take one step, and are content
Having a single boot
To give the toe to the hands of the loam
And mildly turn ambition into root.
But don’t stay the little bands at night
Trooping, when nobody knows or cares
Over the warm undulations of the earth
Until the hills roll out in stars.
[If a tree should move
I suppose I’d miss it
But my faith in the prospect remains implicit.]
From their buds the roses pop
And the long day slinks
to an end
When will all this come to a stop
This road, this road without a bend.The curlew calls upon its nest
And I think of the girls I have known
Oh curlew, the one that I loved best
Comes to my mind fully blown.Cry then, for all past years blend
And the pains of living abate
Not mine to avert what the savage
years send
Though precisely what I await.
June 22, 2014