Regeneration

After Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Barefoot and bewildered, climbing through barbed wire,
Baffled by blackness.
A choir of conundrums begins to hum—
The sun kindles the headlands, the horizons,
The oracle with smoke-cloud eyes
Disperses and the mockingbird
wails to the footprints left behind,
Shattering the pressure that paralyzes—
The ice covering the exuberant creek.

Morning swaddles each branch, each
Frigid finger in propitious warmth,
Revealing the ruffled rarity of the twisted and tender—
Once woodlands, now wounded waste
Even the widowmakers, those half-dangling branches,
Bask in hope.
Even these charred stumps will be overcome
By fireweed and paintbrush.
Blossoms revel as the restless sun
Shakes them awake.

Print