This week brings us to the final poem share, this time from section four of Away. Section four centers on renewal. One day, I was walking around the yard and saw a robin in the maple tree. It was the end of winter when it could have been warming up, but was frigid. The robin had its little chest puffed out, soaking in the sun. After bottoming out, I was beginning to see love and goodness again, through beauty and truth. I was reading wise words from careful people and seeing the sun start to come back. I was holding on by the love of my husband who was with me through all of it. I was beginning to reorient toward love in all the ways it had manifested to me as real over the past several years. Out of this came “Turning.”
Turning
What you expect
on a day of late winter wind
is hunkering. Eyes shut. Shoulders
round. Neck down. But what you find,
in the low branches of the still bare, but bud-
filled maple, is a robin with her feathers puffed
out in a light glow of sun. The rays warm the underside
of her body, down to the skin under those wispy
thin layers of fluff. You would like to fall
into the fuzz of that silky gray down.
And maybe you could.
You have hunched into the fierce wind a long time,
which you needed to do. But now you are ready
to turn and open your underside to the sun.
As you do, you find you’re talking soft,
walking light, thinking the good in us
might grow up vibrant over the ruins
of the old stones. Might become
the roots, trunks, and branches
that will grow up
to become another
someone’s
keeper.
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