Living Tree Poetry

I bring with me a field.
I don’t like expectations, uncertainties.
The new year is a precipice.
Tasks ahead I cannot face, promises I’ve made.

I am a field mouse, scurrying
through the long grass to its home.
With haste I might avoid detection.
But in all the fretful rushing, what fear is it that follows?

So I bring with me a clearing – mown.
That the sky, through a break in the trees,
will bear down upon me with her sun,
a spotlight on my field.

It takes courage to stand open,
still as a deer frozen to the track.
I must be as the cat, soothed by a masterly hand,
though its instinct is to run.

Yes, I bring with me a field – cleared –
and a tentative trust in the dawn.
For perhaps the unknown is a blessing yet hidden,
not a thing to engender our fears.

That perhaps I can be as the agapanthus opening,
doing the thing for which it were made.
Whoever heard of a shy branch in full blossom,
or a temperate plant at bloom in the cold.

So yes, I can be still, I think, as a statue,
amongst all the hurry and the angst.
So much that the birds might draw in and settle
upon my shoulders

at peace in the breadth of my field.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
January 2020

“Acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved.”
– Saint Seraphim of Sarov