It is where you are now
that is the only thing true,
the only thing that matters.
That you can sink into the pillow,
or the sand, or the green grass,
and turn your head
that the sun will make a beam
right upon your face,
or the gracious dark.
The hills are both in sun and shadow,
and from where I am now
the mountains
have made a cradle of the lake
as deep as they are high,
that somewhere we float in the middle.
And the sun does her full tilt
from slope to slope,
indifferent and yet positioned
that we are neither too hot nor cold,
as though somehow
to be given the requirements for life is enough.
For what else
does the rose need to bloom,
and what does it know but the moment
stretched at its highest point
as a golden dome of light,
to then sink as a stone in the cradle of the dark.
The golden leaves here
make a folly of the need to know.
That we must always chase the light
is a ruse the hurried fall ever into.
We know roots in the ground or bodies afloat,
that the sun will make her way around
and the moment dissolve into light,
flickering as a flame from wick to wick
now reducing to embers
to then reignite.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
April 2021
Living Tree Poetry 