. . . says a twig to a stream, to a river to the sea . . .
“Why do you struggle so very mightily?
The ice grabs you like it’s beholden me.”
B
ut the water gurgles, below, unconcernedly.
“Once I bore a crown so light and green!
Where is it now? Only you have seen!
In the Fall I blazed the brightest red!
Now, in the Winter, I wish you were dead . . .”
The twig remembers that Spring comes again;
its leaves will be born and unfurl then,
“And Fall will give them to you to take from me!”
. . . says the twig to the stream to the river to the far away sea . . .

But the twig’s just a shadow the stream must pass through.
The ocean calls it home, so that’s what it’ll do.
The stream was born of a past Winter’s ice
and the twig’s just a shadow through which it must slice.
And . . . maybe it might bear a leaf or two
but it can’t remember what it might do.

An Ocean rages at the earth and the sky!
Rocks are torn to pebbles and mists flung to fly.
Then one day its water, as rain,
awakes the twig to leaf again.
And a twig looks down at the slice of shade
its leaves, once again, upon the stream, have made.
And forgets, come Fall, what colors there’ll be;
another twig is born of a branch of a tree.

One far Winter the water will freeze,
a cold dire wind will strip branches from trees.
One Old Twig floats down to the sea
and uncovers one thing a twig might be:
bright driftwood cast far ashore
and it’s not now a twig anymore.

A Flame spits embers at the dark, starry sky.
The children of its anger upon the winds do fly.
A tree gives those children a home in its leaves
as an iced over stream groans and grieves;
praying for safe passage through the Shadow of the Twig up above
. . . and so flows the circle of the cycle of the rhythm of Nature’s Love . . .

Time is but a moment that passes you by;
a stream of cold tears that others must cry.
Twigs glare darkly at other streams;
Life’s much bigger . . . and smaller . . . than it seems.