After (Storm Song)

After (Storm Song)

Trees sing and sing.  They flutter, shake
and flap, stand up, on tiptoes, stretch
their wings toward the south, toward
barely a memory of sun.  They chatter,
lean toward one another, and release
a million wings in a triumph of multicolored
flight, of hungry splendor.  Each wing
whispers one word of a story, finally told,

but nothing stops the clangor of their need. 
Fly, fly, the winds command.  Trees rattle
their bones, toss up their fallen wings, shake
the earth from their roots and dance.

When the storms come, the last warmth
of wings and song depart.  Trees, dancing
naked in the wind, uprooted by yearning,
stumble.  Crash, clatter, shake the earth, lie
like giant pick-up sticks, like bones in an
elephant graveyard, lie in the damp fading
shivers of their fallen light and wings, weep
and into the dark earth, they begin to journey
.

Mary Taitt
081006-1644-1c


--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary