Photo by Marvin Ronsdorf on Unsplash

Dew lies heavy on the grass this morning.
separate drops, with sunlight diamond rays from each.

In just that way, dew takes me back
to Bird’s lane, walking from Granny’s house to school,
Spirit captured in spider-webs stretched here and there
among tall grasses, weeds, anything on the banks along the lane,
dew-drop spangled, like silver hung crystal.

And I become the web, feeling dewdrops as they slide, gather together,
run down and seep into the earth.
I want to go with them, to know of primordial times,
when a drop of water might hold keys to the secret of all that is to come.

But the spider joins the web to a vine of ivy climbing an old oak tree,
I become the ivy, twining and reaching around and among the knobby branches
of that oak, reading crags of bark, seeking with tendrils to listen
to sap rising from roots ranging far and wide.

I hear murmurs of men in robes, joining in groves of oak,
praying their mystery prayers to beneficent gods who blessed the earth,
or to cruel gods who demanded evil gifts.

But I am the ivy, reaching the top of the oak now visited by a large bird,
Iridescent black. And as it rises again to the sky,
I become the feather in its beating wing, to be carried over growing grain,
lamb-strewn meadows, spawning ponds,
to rest on the straw-thatched roof of a stone-built cottage.

The bird preens,
the feather falls, to said on currents of air through centuries,
to rest upon a narrow path beside rose gardens,
where walks a man in a wide ruffled collar,
who smiles and picks up the feather to use as a makeshift quill.

In the cottage he continues upon the page,
Pouring the fire from within him,
and I long to become the poem,
that tells forever the sweet sharing of spirit,
captured in dewdrops
on a web
in spring.

July 1996