Green

"Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also"
     - Mary Oliver

This is what I look to understand.
This green, this new hope
of shoots that push up through
the dank hollow of tree stumps,
of newborn leaves
freshly mapped in veins,
this green that insists on
being, that insists on insisting,
life that cannot be denied,
its dark thrumming of sorrow
only the green thing turned inward for a moment,
like the moth's fluttering wing quiescent on a branch,
or the still of night air stretched across a desert,
a cessation, deceptive in its void,
where life nonetheless still stirs.
Yes, this is what I want to understand;
that grieving and fear
are not stopping points,
that gentle moss clings
to the scarred bark of a tree
like the love that surrounds me
the love I must gather up,
and rise again.

[Published in CALYX, A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Winter, 2005]