As my wife and I have spent the last couple evenings packing, we’ve been running into all kinds of interesting things. For example, I recently found this poem. I wrote it a number of years ago, and yet it’s message rings ever true.
I hope you enjoy it:
There remain scars of broken limbs
shattered by a storm’s strong winds—
a tiny planet in despair from nature’s sins.
What is now frozen in winter
brings a feeling of loss, or just a hint or
a work of art?—a natural disaster.
The wrinkled bark and delicate
are the branches as they knit
a blanket around the place it sits.
Life once broken-limbs severed
wishing for more than spring can deliver.
Winter’s craft, it’s ice so clever.
But hope remains in the knobs,
of the phantom branch and in the job
of spring to heal the tree as it sobs
and in the sunlight when it reaches, breaching the cracked bark
and in a single springtime sprout when it embarks
on a solitary journey to bring life into this tree-work-of-art.
Joe Graves 