Sudden Thought

Maybe it was a the unbound bouquet
of leaves being tossed by a silver wind;
Or the mouse crawling over my left foot,
treating my shoelace like a river
to be carefully forded;
It’s also possible that it was the view alone,
out over a slow roll of lawn and down
toward Flora who stands as a sentinel
over a scalene patch of autumnal wildness.

If I was a tree, I might reasonably wish to be like that one.

Short, knotty, and appealingly mismatched;
Some fullness, some gaps, host to life
seen and unseen, outstretched toward
what lies beyond, rooted in the Is of place,
time, and circumstance;
Showing her age while sheltering the power
to leaf again, green and curious.
Not minding in the least
the birds’ nests tangled in her hair.

Kimberly M. King