This Quickening: Sleepless, Past Mid-life

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In this darkening, you watch the aura
of a northwest sky turn lavender blue.
Waverings of new leaves go quiet,
unused senses seem to be opening.

Austrian pines form a sheltering quorum
around you; pale dogwood blossoms
are small souls ascending, and there’s a reaching . . .
as though for all you haven’t known you need.
At midnight a tinge of light remains above the hills.

Beyond garden, pale Russian olive sends out pungency;
scent of mint rises from where it spreads along fences . . .
grown from a sprig brought by our son in first grade.

Night birds calling in other tongues hallow
the tabernacle sky . . . go suddenly still.
Changeling seasons have been quick
like that: warm days such as this,

to breath paling visibly; the true colors
of leaves, bolding before they let go;

milk fern frosting windows,
a lake’s dream of ice, rising.

Fat sparrows of childhood still sputter
through your winter dreams, thin down
for spring to Indian summer;

halo moons ripen over holy forests
of the mind, where all seasons
are one with the transmitting stars,
quasar, pulsar . . . old sound.