Living Tree Poetry

Ah, we have whipped our wings
for long now,
fluttered ourselves to stillness,
come back down to calm,
the heart beating hard in the breast,
coming home.

And we have brought our wings in.
We have after speaking
and tearing the air
in frantic movement,
come to a sudden lack of words,
to exhaustion.

Everything has knocked us –
like a windstorm,
that the stuffing is showing –
and our feathers need a
still refuge now, to flatten down,
resume their shape.

We remember
that the earth is our mother,
and under her wing we are enfolded in.
We look for the silence again
from which the world was born,
the darkness of the womb.

We seek in us the feminine
in which we are restored.
All power now run empty
that it’s simply steam –
and breath spent
we draw ourselves in,

enclosed.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
June 2020