When I
think of those woods, I think a basket
filling
up with morning as it pours
over the
lip of the mountains. Also I remember the way
the noon
light falls between the saplings: vertical
pencil
strokes, turning each young leaf, in its
brash
green, into a lens to scatter bright lumens
like foil
over bark and blade. The maple leaves
believe
in the light with foliate faith. They dream it
all night
long, and angle their faces to meet morning.
And on
overcast, enigmatic days,
lightís
blessing still filters down, even in
the beginnings
of storm. Or in a sun shower,
that gentle
golden drizzle-sundrops condensed
and falling--wetting
the leaves to a shine
and dripping
from them to the soaked forest floor.
Speckled
toads, camouflaged the color of humus,
breathe
light in. Birds swim it, fleeter than fish.
Buttercups
open their mouths to it,
believing
that when their petals fall
they will
become pieces of sky.
Light
makes even the dirt blossom-watch
for these
signatures of spring: the up-curling fiddle-heads,
the purple
bleed of the wild phlox along the ditches,
the way
the bee comes to the tongue of the lupine
for its
surfeit of sweetness.
Poems
reprinted by permission of the author.
