Felled,
broken,
earth-thrust,
ground-borne,
I heard them lunge
dark down
(one day
when the sky wore dark
and my heart darker).
I saw them swing
out of the sky,
heard them sigh
who had known how to sing
only.
Today
I passed the field
I thought lonely
for branch-climb and song,
and I saw them
lying there
in the May:
not bare –
flowering;
not dead –
lying in flower;
striking light
on less than sky;
stretching up,
stretching;
sounding a song
to their last spring;
singing
(live-dead),
loving,
flowering for spring.
It was all they knew
to do.
Evelyn Coffey
