Transform your life…

Image borrowed from Loren Webster’s blog, In a Dark Time…The Eye Begins to See

In my rapacious search for poems to send out (yes — I made it to 50 submissions!) I came across many old poems, plus notices that a few had been published elsewhere already and needed to be removed from the send-out file. Here’s to better organization in the future.

This poem appeared at Escape into Life (EIL), thanks to the fabulous Kathleen Kirk. I wrote it when my daughters were young and I used to write early in the morning, in my basement room, usually while also running a load of laundry and getting ready to dash off to the college.

The Tree

She cracked the window to let in the world
and a great tree offered its branch
blistering the green wall of her room

where desk and bookshelf and lamp
stood sacrosanct. Here,
said the tree, this branch

is a ladder. Transform
your life. Put out your eyes.
See all things bright, restored, whole.

Possess all that you long for.
She pushed the branch out,
closed the window. Hands sticky

with resin, redolent of winter fir,
she turned to the blistered wall.
She sang with the trapped wind.