A Poem: Now that I am Yours

Now that I am yours,
I can’t breathe for seeing.

For seeing the new fronds of spring
rising from dead woods.
My hydrangea with her slight, shy bloom
of a beginning.
The camellia, whose every leaf’s a flower.

And I can’t see for breathing,
for inhaling the new air,
vapour from a rain soaked lawn,
evaporating to heaven.

The oxygen of trees,
that I,
a half deflated balloon,
am filled.

Now that I am yours,
I am all heart for loving,
all ears for hearing.

Each trilling note of bird,
ringing, ringing,
as a clear bell signaling lauds.

And the piwakawaka’s response,
it’s soft tunes and quiet melodies,
like mine here in
prayerful resonance.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
November 2022

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‘Flee from the crowd, and dwell with truthfulness,
Let your thing suffice, though it be small…’

~ From ‘Truth’ by Geoffrey Chaucer

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However just and anxious I have been,
I will stop and step back
from the crowd of those who may agree
with what I say, and be apart.
There is no earthly promise of life or peace
but where the roots branch and weave
their patient silent passages in the dark;
uprooted, I have been furious without an aim.
I am not bound for any public place,
but for ground of my own
where I have planted vines and orchard trees,
and in the heat of the day climbed up
into the healing shadow of the woods.
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn
and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

~ A Standing Ground, Wendell Berry