We want to know the future so bad
we’ll even let a groundhog tell us.
The great irony, of course,
is that the groundhog doesn’t know.
In this part of the country,
under fourteen inches of snow,
he isn’t even up yet.
Today all he knows is sleep is good for now.
Spring is another side of the planet, slowly
walking toward us, unmoved by groundhogs.
The future is a monarch butterfly in Mexico
who will soon die, but whose grandchildren
will arrive here this summer, though now
it is not thinking of that, but feasting
on drops of nectar and water, each
a little globe, sparkled by the warm Mexican sun.
The snowflake does not dream of the sea. It lies still,
as long as its six-sided wonder will hold.
The oak and the birch know nothing of the future
but what they hold curled in their tiny hands.
The brook, under its sleep of ice,
is both spring and mouth, earth and ocean.
The goldfinch, the downy woodpecker,
the chickadee, even in the snow, eat enough
for one day at a time, given this day their daily bread.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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