I reach into the dark for these few words,
humble before the memory
of what we were given.
Now as the leaves of summer
stir in the morning breeze
I recall the soft wet earth
and the rising we once knew.
Hummingbirds green and gold appear,
tracks of deer cross the commons,
in the deep folds of the creek
the sound of insects and young life.
Something will come from the buried ash,
a new birth under clearing skies.
I leave the old garden and take wing
with the bright colored birds,
the gifts and the time of their giving
recorded and left in the ground
to feed what is yet to be born.
photograph by Louis MacKenzie