Everything in my chest
reaches out to bathe itself
in the chestnut colored loam;
strewn all about
with burnt and blackened
pieces of bark and wood,
mingled with earth and
needles as if from
the basement of my days.
It reaches toward the
warmth of the forest floor that has
been asleep for the winter
of my adult life.
It is drawn out by
the new heat of an age old woods;
by the heat of everyman’s
journey through these days
of finding a voice – finding
a central home in the self.
I find myself relaxed in my own
aging. Coming to myself like
a warming bed of needles on
the dirt of thousands upon thousands
of aeons, and winters, flowering blooms
of gentle-life growth.
Cones pepper the view and
thick blankets of retreating snow
withdraw their reach to the bottom
of the hills; uncovering all that has
fallen and died since autumn; all
that is in there – that
I have forgotten until now..
My days have pulled in
a bit lately, retreating back
to the bottom of meaning.
I find pieces of myself
scattered on the floor of my
life, and see wonder in the
ripening of passages and turns.
The compost of my days is rich
with dank dark expression, holding
itself against the leaner times. I have
found more life then I knew I had held.
The darkness holds no absence
it only hides the view. Flowers and
blooms for of future glory
lay dormant in the tubers
and roots of all life’s meaning
of imagination and place; of
time and space.
Countless feet of melting snow open
my heart to a call for warmth. Standing
on the remnants of all that is past,
tenderness rises like the scent of fresh dirt.
Tilled and open, it awaits the planting of
the second half of life.
A raven sings this same song
from the other side of this vista.
I can hear it, but he escapes my view.
