The last time you didn’t listen to me
I was talking about the riverand that old sycamore tree.
How all winter I offer
prayer-ties to this touchstone
while she guards the dark water.
It is spring now, I feel her stir,
draw up from root, to limb, to branchthe assurance of another leafing season.
No direction, instruction, distraction,
no “I’m too busy” – just her
gentle patience in soft morning light.
But you weren’t listening
off on some quiet journey of your own.Preoccupied with mail, coffee,
the evening news.
Wandering the caverns of
the empty work pages of life.
What I wanted to say was
I’m still here, that I long to plough that deep unnamed place
from which my sap still rises, flows,
my skin still sheds and
my hands still bud with poems.
