old growth

I have work to do this morning

but I keep running into poems

that give me pause and pull

my gaze out my second-story

window to the dance of

sunshine and shadows on

the fence line, the blanket

of dead leaves turning to soil

and the trees, their bare branches

reaching or — perhaps — offering

their despair and determination

without a leaf to show for it.

My heart knows the same song

the trees are singing in their

slumber — they are not skeletons;

dead and dormant are not the same.

It’s what you said as we walked

yesterday in the fading light:

“The trees never quit growing.”

I want to say the same of me.

Peace,

Milton