For weeks these woods took off their leaves
is if it were too hot,
and now the land’s near naked,
like people lying on the beach,
with a bathing suit of snow,
revealing every dip and curve,
a string bikini tracing every branch and stone,
highlighting every breast and thigh
of hillside, every hip and rib exposed.
They rest under a pall of light,
their shoulders, legs, and bellies honestly laid bare.
Among the folded beach umbrellas of trees
the sun leans down and touches them,
these forms that lie as if asleep, that drift
out of time. The sunbathers think of nothing else,
not work or children or taxes,
or thawing spring, or that eventual day
when, finally, summoned by the sun,
they will, like all of us,
run down to the sea.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
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