Living Tree Poetry

Sometimes we wonder why the rain,
the winter wind?
The falling ink black night
that sweeps away the light
with heavy curtains.

We wonder why the pain?
How sudden joy can fly
and grief set in,
as frost covered grass,
or as ice sets a seal upon windowpanes.

How to thaw, with the memory of light
now an uncertain thing?
And hope even,
a story we once told ourselves,
which the dark seeks to steal with the sun.

Yes, we wonder why winter,
barren wilderness,
is at all considered necessary.
How of all our human conditions,
pain and suffering,
must make itself so strongly felt.

Like the winter wind
and her inhospitable season,
charging in without asking admittance,
hollowing us out,
that even our bones sing in long lament.

A strange song of shock and betrayal,
or a hymn to the remembrance of things,
that in the replaying we might postpone
this reduction to winter’s bare branches,

her frozen ground and scarce provisions.
Her snatching of joy,
as a winged bird singing out its days
to find no breath remaining.

Yes, pain is a cruel trick for love’s devotion.
Perhaps love has her seasons,
as a woman her children.
Everything is a lesson in letting go.
And even spring,
is a mirage of the imagination

until in stubborn grace the shoot of
hope pushes through.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
May 2021