The Sweetgum’s cache of seed pods are heaped upon the earth in offering. Each burlike sphere contains two small seeds. Each seed retains the bright green, star-leafed memory of its parent, and all of its potential.
Sweetgum Seed Pods — An Image
Patience — A Poem
For weeks,
the hearth was stoked
and fed.
Now,
two brands withdrawn
and lead
away
to light their
separate paths.
Cold absence
and quiet.
Wait —
patient breath upon the coals
till the embers
stir again
to flame.
— C.Birde
White Ash — An Image
In Greenwood Cemetery, the White Ash lifts sinuous limbs, etching the flattened plate of January sky.
Deja Vu — A Poem
Particled lines of light
glance through the kitchen window;
drone of radio,
and dishwasher’s chant;
unsettled kettle, so near to boil;
the knife in my hand
that snicks through kale,
ribboning leaves —
Each entwines and elevates
the sense of expectation —
They gather on the side steps,
forty-five minutes late or
two seasons early,
bearing creation and song…
Fluid time slides around me,
eddying forward and back,
and I stand motionless,
sharply aware of the slim line
separating premonition
from memory.
— C.Birde
Sycamore — An Image
The Sycamore’s distinctive and mottled skin is beautifully revealed once its leaves have drifted free. Often, I walk past this tree and its siblings, and have seen the trio clothed in Spring’s green and festooned with compact pom-pom seedpods. In Summer, they shed like snakes, curled sheaths of bark accumulating in the grass at their feet. But I think they might be most striking when plucked bare by Winter’s touch.
Color in Winter — A Poem
Without,
the birds flit and huddle
amongst silvered branches;
squirrels are plushly bundled
against the dipping cold;
thickened shadows stretch
and recline,
obedient to the sun’s lowered,
glancing angle —
All is blanched of color,
rinsed in flinty tones.
But within these walls
for a moment —
for a breath —
the ceiling is stroked with color;
a smooth field of white strung
with jeweled notes
as narrow rays strike
that small drop of faceted glass,
and pass
through myriad polished faces —
Bending,
refracting,
brightening.
— C.Birde, 1/16
Lichened Dogwood — An Image
Soft moss and rosettes of lichen embroider the pebbled bark of this young dogwood.
Bloom in Winter — A Poem
Amnesiac Winter
paid a brief visit,
confused,
complaining of jet-stream detours,
converging pressures,
ingratitude;
of invitations received late
and mislaid.
Unsettled,
he wandered,
muttering a fog,
flinging fistfuls of hail
over greening lawns and
bruising the blooms
of pink-fringed trees
that had the nerve to flower
in his absence.
— C.Birde
Antique Cherry — An Image
The antique cherry wears a gown of quilt-worked bark.
Separation — A Poem
Weaving through
the misted morn,
through soft-furred edges
of gray chill,
I stirred a cloud of birds —
blackbirds, all.
As one, they rose,
an avian inhalation,
a gasp
of feathered wings;
when I only wish to be
the tree
in whose branches
they might alight.
–C.Birde
