POEM: Promise

Today is earth’s damp gratitude
A spongy soil sort of promise.
It is that impulsive instinct
Dormant in every single atom:
Grateful for the loping boughs,
Of swinging pines;
Unrepentant for all the remnant decay
Scattered everywhere.

I pause to clip
A strand of forsythia branch,
And with my hands I bend that yellow branch
Into a wreath which I plant firmly on your head.

I kiss your lips as light as drizzle.

Beneath this canopy of spring,
In the presence of the sharper light
Of longer days,
We wed -
Each one to the other,
Then each of us to the earth –
Then both of us to every thing
That wriggles and crawls and flies
And gallops and walks -
In seasons yet undreamed by us.