The ground feels our footsteps again.

The wind, petal-spun and
perhaps aware, is young
again and the mountains, cut from
legendary blue, erase me until I am,
yet again,
utterly mortal.

In the soft insanity of awe,
in music heard with the eyes,
in the universe that shifts with
one slow step of the crane,
the Earth cries out:

No more!
Let me live, let me sing, let
me teach . . . don't you remember
how much I gave,
and aren't we all connected like
the secret star-realm spinning
on looms of lifetimes, I mean,
unfathomable threads tangled
like beautiful madness,

and aren't we multitudes
teaming in one Light?

Doesn't the Creator live inside
the created?

The crane shakes the cosmos
again as another leg breaks the
mist-swept, sea-glass lake, then,
like an apparition, a vast fan of
wings pound the air,
leaving imprints
of glory and Heaven in the mind,
and what a good guest, the bird is,
doing little harm
to this tiny sphere . . .

living so gently on its way
to forever,

somehow knowing, I guess, that
every stalk of marsh grass
and every pearl of rain
and every maple, twisted
into a visual song, is the
same Love creating
and loving itself.


Patricia Joan Jones