march 11, 2009... you are there (we are here)

the evidence

the long thin fingers of morning
before gray daylight breaks into the pantry
and steals images generated overnight,
images that replenish spirits sufficiently
to move the mind to unseen challenges,
are fingers of the hand that massages
the soul when there is nothing else.

when you harvested milkweed pods and nettles,
did you ever stop to think there might be
something else to fill the bowls your mother
set on the table to fill your stomach, or,
that the coming years would overflow
with milk and honey, before the sharp edge
of recession cleaved that all away again,
that you would find yourself back at the beginning?

the child in us never goes away, never grows up,
remains the cotyledon within the seed
of the body, protected by dragons that guard
the doors to a treasury of experience, without which
we are nothing more than a gentle crosswind, nothing
less than the diaphanous wing of a butterfly
locked in the vein of a mountain where it sleeps
until metamorphosed from history into smoke.

it is springtime and the grackles are back.
we can hear them in the black branches
of the old silver maples, clear as bells
calling the faithful to awaken,
sometimes to dreams they never had.