Confiding beech trees
hold cardinals as they sing,
song reaching their roots.

Skunk cabbage shoulders
nudging out of the spring swamp
for winter-hungry deer.

Hard against the wind,
waiting it out in late March,
lilac’s beginning.

Forest floor below,
woodpeckers fly overhead—
my ancestors, both.

Do you remember
the long walk on pine needles—
the soft tender life?

Bouquet of splitgill
blooming from inside the tree,
pinned at the center.

Sized for hummingbirds,
lined with fur and milkweed silks
and afternoon sun.

I breathe on this earth,
decades next to this river,
I am weight, weight, weight.

Crows fly at sunrise
in loose, sprawling formation,
each voice fills the sky.

In another life
I’m the light in the forest
warming sleeping deer.

I move, you don’t see,
slowly each day on this rock,
it’s how life proceeds.

Who were you that day,
in a flowering orchard
that Van Gogh would paint?

Was it a cold beach?
Where did I go overnight?
I was recomposed.

Green labyrinthine
shield lichen on every branch,
rosettes like small suns.

To be on the earth,
the attempts to describe it:
sun on moss in spring.

Spear thistle wakes up
at the base of a tree stump
as birds sing to sun.

Spring sun on our heads,
wild moss at the riverbank,
mystery, it all.

The early bloomer,
pulled up by the song sparrow,
into the spring sun.

A brow or an arch,
gold dust lichen blooms all year
like a crown of sun.

I am one of the first,
I come with pollen and light
from deep underground.