Understory
(Red in the Bud)
This is our time, declare the small quiet ones.
When those known for grand gestures clutch about them
their demure greens, their virginal white wraps,
their thickest robes of clouded bloom to veil late-winter nakedness,
we stand and declare our lines in fire –
line them out clearly, so that you might sing them too.
Trace each knot and broken place—
see last summer’s heat run along the limb,
clinging like silk, draping each branch with the desire
of winter’s long-pent waiting.
This is our time. We know that soon enough,
we will again take our place in the understory,
unseen, unmarked in the green season.
This brief moment when we sing our story,
brightflame licking along the bones:
it is all we are, all we have to tell.
A poet her words. A singer his song.
read Tracy's previous work in Still
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