My Michelia Yunnanensis greets the morning.
See how it is stretched towards the light?
Each cupped bloom turned
to the north east,
backs set against the wind.
Each uplifted on stems
anchored within leaves,
trusting faces tilted to the gracious sun.
My Michelia Yunnanensis greets the day.
Glistening with the remnants of last night’s rain,
drinking in,
dependent on the water’s cycle,
the great dance of precipitation,
evaporation.
‘That there is a choice?’,
she seems to say,
‘we cannot comprehend.’
To not turn
as a body of weight,
towards hope and trust –
to not fortify against the elements?
‘What choice?’ she seems to ask,
‘could there be?’
That we, lost in our gravitation
towards our own agonies,
our distrust of possibility,
of redemptive grace –
might stop and stand,
humbled, inspired.
For if this stretch of stem,
blossom, and leaf,
upholding the bird’s delicate limbs,
can teach us anything,
perhaps it is
that our positioning,
open, brave, believing
has much to do
with what it is we receive.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
August 2021
‘I let out the sails of my heart,
here I am, here you are’.
From ‘Sails’ by Pat Barrett (feat. Steffany Gretzinger & Amanda Lindsey Cook)
Living Tree Poetry 