Poem: There is Sunlight, There is Wind

I

We begin as vegetables,

climbing up from seeds

like pumpkin vines atop

the wooden garden trellis.

All winter we’ve waited,

tubers in the frozen earth,

dreaming of leeks and apples,

the breeze in the flowering pear.

II

There is an acorn within me,

skipping madly between my ribs.

O once I was wild grass, ecstatic in sunlight,

the music of oak leaves like lute notes

toward which I stretched and bristled.

There is an acorn within me,

reaching tannic feelers through the tips

of my fingers. The roots are nuzzling down,

down, through the soles of my feet,

speaking in the earth, listening to moles.

III

The dusk-sun warps among the buds

of the grasping oak, the long fingers

touching the belly of the sky, shivering.

Our hands splay against the radiance,

becoming blades of yuccas.

Winds wing like doves in our hair,

O there is sunlight in the wind,

rain is kissing the bursting trees.

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Thanks to Flying Island, which published this poem in their November Issue.