Thick cloud covers over blue sky, yet birds
still sing from the rosebush and the maple.
Does gather to eat grass in evening herds,
as wisteria drapes hanging purple
from bending branches thick with hunter’s green,
and breeze blows battered blooms from apple’s limbs.
Every trunk and leaf seems washed and scrubbed clean,
and ponds where mallards glide ripple and brims.
Stones shift and roots tremor in thick soil;
tap root lies exposed by stream where tree fell.
Poison ivy gleams with irritant oil.
Sparrow chicks are still but ghosts in the shell.
Rat-ta-tat-crack, drums the woodpecker’s beak,
singing proof that strength, someday, becomes weak.
