Wren Wood

                           If it is claimed by 

                           those around – or within – you, 

                           that you are too much 

                           or at times, not yet enough;

                           in your retreat to smallness 

                           Dear Heart, please re-call 

                           that the iron in your blood, 

                           in nettles that burn,

                           the core of this blessed Earth,

                           forged in a collapsing star.

                           As you unravel, 

                           re-know how your skin was once

                           carbon held in the 

                           sprawling roots of ancient pines 

                           that flourished after the ice.

                           As panic threatens

                           to swell and wash away all,

                           your sweat works to cool 

                           and calm, and retreats to the 

                           streams of vapour stored as clouds.

                           While you perspire

                           droplets born of the oceans,

                           they rise to join the 

                           transpired outbreaths of pink

                           hawthorns, and violet heartsease,

                           blown across the skies

                           to mountains to fall as snow.

                           And there, your worry 

                           – and mine – is tended until

                           the weight of itself shakes free.

                           I note your nails are

                           worn short through teeth and wrought-thoughts.

                           One day, when we are 

                           long done, this keratin you

                           gift with spit – puh! – back to the land, 

                           will form a rhino’s 

                           horn, the fur of wolves, feathers 

                           of iridescence,

                           turtle-shells, and the scales of

                           adders that bask in the sun.

                           Friend, the calcium 

                           and phosphorus in your bones 

                           were once bound in chalk:

                           cliffs of creatures of the seas.

                           Who before they sank into 

                           the pale sediment, 

                           kept company with the small

                           exhalations of 

                           algae, and reptile giants,

                           who became the birds you now

                           marvel at as we

                           shelter from the rain and watch 

                           in awe-fear as they 

                           twist across the sky, teasing 

                           the storm clouds to charge and s t r i k e !

                           Streaks of lightning split 

                           the atmosphere on repeat;

                           the protons beneath 

                           your feet calling to the ground

                           vivid electricity. 

                           Clouds we gazed into 

                           forms that fine day in July, 

                           do you remember? 

                           Now invoking air’s atoms

                           to white-heat incandescence.

                           And calls nitrogen

                           into blue luminescence.

                           That then falls, torn from

                           within, clutched by a current

                           of rain forcing you to flinch

                           as it thuds against 

                           the soil merging with the work 

                           of microbes smaller 

                           than we can perceive so plants 

                           may feast, then die to nourish 

                           you and so tend to 

                           your thriving. Delivering 

                           that nitrogen, once

                           of the stars then sky then soil 

                           to scaffold your DNA.

                           And in the quiet 

                           of this night, we look for her,

                           – dear Grandmother Moon –

                           who herself cannot be full 

                           without her retreat into 

                           the deep dark. And in 

                           her new-born weeks, she gazes 

                           upon the tide of 

                           distant starlight that made her.

                           We too. And speak of being

                           loved in imperfect 

                           manners by those hearts who have

                           forgotten their own 

                           magnitude, while we search out 

                           past-stars; exploded into

                           fractions of themselves. 

                           Yet their light still edges near;

                           longing to wise-look 

                           upon their young descendants:

                           drifting, lingering in an 

                           illuminated 

                           brilliance of limerence

                           at the thought of All:

                           human, and more-than-we in

                           multiple, ongoing forms. 

                           My friend, please re-call

                           in your retreat to smallness:

                           you’re Light’s memory – 

                           a fingerprint of the stars. 

                           A summation of wonder.

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