Of new spring leaves,
maples in their budding greens,
I sit on copper leaves of ash and oak,
revealed just now from winter’s ice,
as fiddleheads and maidenhair
raise green fronds to renewed life.
My dog whimpers to climb
another hill, or several,
and we do, moving through
the endlessness of a spring day,
taken in through every pore—
the sudden chill of clouds
wafted by a breeze over us,
strolling through pastures, wet
with rain, redolent with dung,
the slow vertiginous dip,
into shadowed hemlock groves,
matted evergreen needles
cushioning our feet,
one with the forest around us,
the endlessness of budding leaves,
and liquid sounds of thrush.

Posted by kind permission of the poet.