Daylight changes
as winter dissolves into spring,
trees shedding their ice
in the warm air.
I stir in my cave,
having digested the dreams
and phantom shadows,
hungry now for color.
It is the world I rise to,
always the world
and the green lens
I look through
to know my place
on the endless shore.
Beauty signals
from budding branches,
the sound of birds returning,
worms breaking ground.
Tender comes the morning
as if these few hours
were a nativity,
the sacred born
again and again
from the darkness
of the blessed earth.

photograph by Kinga Biro
Reading of “Sacred Born” with music by Maryliz Smith