Poetry Month 2023 Post #24: “Present”

April is #NationalPoetryMonth and I am posting a Poem-A-Day. Today’s post is one I wrote last summer. It settled into me how we are surrounded by a world where somethings put down roots (trees) and some things are always moving on (bird migration).

Present

A ghost of the beginning of time.
Primordial memory,
mist moving over mountains.
Possibilities baptize void and vista.

Two people look out
from a porch on a hill.
Searching, perched on the
edge of unknown tomorrows,
painful yesterdays, and a present
impossible to describe.

The world soaks in the night’s storm.
Some still thirsty.
Others saturated by the deluge
of life’s downpour.

Somewhere in the moment,
birds announce their place,
temporary, but of deep importance.
Their song is now more audible
than the lingering drops
of celestial water falling
on trees, here for hundreds of years.

Flying is only part of what
birds do. Trees have
roots and branches that
stretch toward
nourishment their entire lives.
Universes are born
and pass into timelessness
even now.