Canopy

 

Wouldn’t you rather be in the grasslands

dancing to the winds and rains, being a blade,

being green and grounded, centred in the land,

watching the timelessness of light and shade?

 

Wouldn’t you rather be in temperate zones

be a willow weeping into a lake,

the paving under old arches, or keystones

or those meandering routes rivers take?

 

I do love the grasslands, I love the woods

and I adore the shapes of conifers

but the rainforest is equally good -

the different beauties of the universe.

 

No, there's no other place I’d rather be

content where I am – the current canopy.

This is the thing with feathers...

 

A couple of days in and the wing feathers

are already bedraggled; the weather

is strangely warm when it should have been cold

- summer in winter.  The year is just days old.

 

Somewhere the light’s dying. Somewhere icy winds

have knifed trees. More grace than can be imagined

even in the unkempt, in the shady light -

the rims of hope and grace are seldom watertight.

 

The anglers are gone, the fishing boats are back,

sun’s in its rightful place in the zodiac.

Waiting for the bones to move a bit less smooth

the flesh to peel away and reveal the truth –

 

that feathers, shaggy or not, knifed trees and all

remain beautiful however the light falls.