spring walk, 6 a.m.

this is the moment
when I am unearthed,
when I am at last unbound
by mundane constraints –

now, when the birds
at their riotous best,
launch their relief that yes,
day again brings light

in a canon shared by wrens
and robins and flitting juncos
from trees whose slow buds
are indecently near to bursting

now, when the still low sun
lifts slowly above the hill,
when light is burnished pink
and leaf-filtered

here I am both more and less
myself than at any other moment
and piercingly in love
with every greening tree

© Sarah Whiteley