Living Tree Poetry

Between heaven and earth
there’s an Eden.
Strip of pink stretching the length
of the evening’s horizon.

Though a narrow band,
its magic is in
how its edges blend,
to merge both with earth and heaven.

That sometimes,
when our feet
are subsiding in the sand,
we find our heads in the clouds.

This Eden,
which we witness
with the rising of the moon
or the golden setting sun;

or round stones under our feet,
and water upon which
we weightless
rise and float.

This Eden,
reminds us how the earth,
so solid and substantial under-feet,
was made out of stuff from above.

And this Eden,
that we touch, survey, feel
for a moment in in our grasp,
as the heavy weight of a lover’s hand –

this in-between heaven and earth place,
is the remembrance both,
of the shape of things been,
and yet to arrive.

This strip of pink,
light band the length of the evening’s horizon,
so narrow we might think ourselves,
crammed between earth and sky –

shows us how,
when our feet are submerged,
our heads can still rise from the mist
into the clouds.

And heaven can appear
as though proffered out in open palms.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
January 2019