When it’s darkest
I look for slivers of light.
How the rain dressed leaves glint
under streetlight.
How if it were not for the wet
they wouldn’t be seen,
dark as it is
in the shadows of trees.
When it’s hardest
I look for things to praise.
There in the set of chin,
softening to a smile.
There in the grace of a marriage forever
renegotiated,
in the love which shines through
splintered shields.
And when it’s unclear
I trust in convoluted paths.
In the way my daughter centres herself,
a tree in a storm,
buttressed up against the flank
of parental protection –
the love which like a band
lengthens and rebounds.
And when it’s scariest I think
of love’s tender interventions,
her way of surprising and reminding
us of life’s re-emergence.
In the smiles of a son,
and the gift of humour resurrected –
all those little big things
which in the end save a day.
And when it’s wildest
I look through the panes of the glass,
at the river’s green body at the end of the road,
at the sky a scuffle of sun and showers,
and the wind a reminder
of the spinning of the world,
which rocks us and shakes us
to then set us on the ground.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
June 2022
Living Tree Poetry 