When god visits us he sleeps
without a clock in empty bird nests.
– Jim Harrison (“The Little Appearances of God”)
We give ourselves away
perhaps too generously
in poetry, leave bare
the tree, its cankered burls
we’ve grown to live with
season after shorter season
shedding pages
to a southwest wind
before the storm
leaves us clean
once more to dream
the winter long
of green—yearning for
pastoral perfection
between each heartbeat
of littered pages—
we give ourselves away
to open space, to all
the new and wild beginnings
we’ve yet to see
until we learn to live in trees.
drycrikjournal 