On the bridge
between waking and sleeping
I met my father's eyes.

So beautiful and dark,
filled with quiet trouble,
and with tender invention.

Here in this nature park
green branches reach out
to one another, embracing
the air and the sky, touching,
sending chills down each other's
bark and trunk, meeting overhead.

You, my youngest brother, have
our father's eyes, and they are eyes
of pain and tenderness, of caring
every day for our beloved, ailing planet.

Above our heads, just now, down at the bottom
of the road to Ely Ford, sycamores carry thousands
of backlit leaves, each a green window into its own reality.

Who could have known that after so many months of silent solitude,
giving up completely on the illusory version of love,
a new beginning to life would begin as clearly and simply
as the moment when a butterfly, shoulders hunched in the final stages
of imprisonment within its sacred cocoon, knows unswervingly that
this is the day to bust loose, to slowly stretch wet, untried wings,
gingerly begin to flex her coloured, powdery, armature:
learning the way trust in truth and goodness
frees one completely.

*And sheets, and sheets of white light wash over me.
Sheets and sheets of white light wash over me.