Day 22 – Into The Woods

Into The Woods

Into the fading light

the pink curiosity of a summer evening

something known, absolutely; something loved, absolutely

and everything I have yet to see.  

The trees, and the way they move and sing

lacy skirts of ivy gilded in a 7 o’clock glow

the waterfall-hush of leaves and the syncopated beats of the woodpecker

thud-thud-thud in my chest and jaw, and I don’t have

a bedtime any longer, so if I wanted I could wait 

for the owls to wake up.

Through the peach-stained trunks, the lustrous paint-stroke movements

of a deer, all slender leg and kohl-wrapped eye and in the undergrowth

fast uncanny ruffling, and I won’t ever see what made the

ferns dance.

I wait.  In the gentle gold, a figure is forming, and I see

my mother, and outrunning the seasons and the years and the endless cycle of 

green and red and brown and bare, there is a younger me 

running to meet her where the sun

makes the woods

magic.

Daisy Harris