Feeling Small in a Multitude of Ways

                "I will love my crooked neighbor with my crooked heart"                                                                                           W.H. Auden

If the sky were any bigger it would kill me clean.
like an iceberg into the melting sea.
 
The sun colors the sky best before it breaks dawn
each wisp of cloud a red kite on a string.
 
It enhances the tree clinging to its last wind-torn leaf
like a mother to her child through the fence of the king.
 
It’s bigger than a barn from afar, that tree
and I don’t know its name or how old it is,
 
limbs full of empty nests unraveling in the wind.
Too lazy to have walked through a field of grass
 
to stand under a tree, the vast sweep of its arms,
and pay homage to that which is braver than me.
 
Too cowed to lob arrows at he who'd be king, 
my capacity to feel small is undiminished  by lies.
 
The sun travels its arc across a blood-splattered sky
and I finish the day in a multitude of small ways.

In concert with the theme March of Time from the poets at What's Going On and with OLN (open link night) at dVerse, the pub where poets hang out.  A good way to finish out the week, methinks!!. 

What The Tree Remembers

 

Stumps  cut down in their youth

line the ditch. Roots full of life

 

with a reach wider

than their whacked-off crowns

 

cut off at the knees

        (can you feel it?)

now have nothing to feed.

 

The parked bulldozer

        (can you smell it?)

with its claws in the dirt

 

is poised to make smooth

the way of man.

 

But wait.

        (look closely)

Saplings spring stubbornly

 

from stumps left alone.

The tree remembers.

Written for What's Going On Blog which challenges us this week to see both the dark and light in a world abounding with both and find a balance. Showing, somehow, the beauty and hope in a world that often feels dismal and divisive; with highlights to poems by Mary Oliver and Deena Metzger who do this all the time in their amazing poetry.