Friday, July 6, 2018

Puget Sound





Puget Sound

A misty drizzle falls over Puget Sound
enters every living thing
thimble berries I pick from the roadside—
berries red, soft, tender
stain my fingers red
flood my tongue with tang.

Water seeps into leaves, grass, me.
I’m as damp as the black crenulated slug
crossing the forest path with deliberate gravity.

Under a lush green cedar bough I lean
on its stout rough trunk—
I feel the qi in flowing through every living thing
and in water, minerals, earth and from
sun cupped golden marsh marigolds.

A sweetness breathes from pink rose hedges,
chicory stands sentinel for my blue longings.
Ferns breathe green ideas
From graceful filigrees.
Mist falls on an unseen singer haunting
The forest canopy with unearthly scales of notes.
Imbued, baptized networks of roots under
my boots know I am here—the news
travels all the way down to the salty Sound.

Octopus, seals, sea otters hear the news.
They know my love of them and the gray whale
I greeted in the Baja last winter breaches--
its great body and it looks shoreward.
We are all joined in this joy.

 --Barbara Spring

No comments:

Post a Comment