by Heather Kaufman
After Marilynne Robinson
The white birch still grips
its yellowing leaves
beneath the white October sky,
knowing dormancy is near,
knowing too that renewal
will come in the blossoming
of need which is its own reward,
unfurled as a pea-green leaf in spring.
The stippled trunk curves left,
almost as thin as my wrist,
its branches bowing
toward the rain-matted grass.
I reach for, almost touch, a leaf
that beams bright as a daffodil
in April, all attention focused
on this singular symmetry.
The almost is everything.
My fingers close on air
as the leaf breaks from its branch
and flies unfettered on the breeze,
an ephemeral promise, drifting
to its grave.
I cannot grasp what is ready to float.
It is always a reaching, only sometimes
a bending to the One
who brings all things back to life.
Heather Kaufmann is a New England native, poet, and Anglican Ordinand. Her recent work has been published in Ekstasis, Anglican Theological Review, CRUX, and The Windhover, among others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2022 recipient of the Luci Shaw Prize for Creative Writing from Regent College.
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