VERNAL EQUINOX

 

Light is different now,

          not just that the day is as long as the night,

          but that it strikes head on

          instead of arriving at an angle.

 

It has a new clarity,

washes off blurred beginnings,

creates a sharp focus,

exposes cherry blossoms destroyed

by a night’s deep freeze,

          highlights bird and squirrel feeding frenzies,

          unveils the forest floor bare of underbrush,

          warms the beech trees’ tawny leaves

                   still branched and shifting

in the wind before

they fall.

 

It stretches out the length of the trees

                   to greet the stars,

          sheds images of small spaces,

peers into deep wells of mystery

that surrounded long nights,

          uncovers what we can know,

                   all the way back to the beginning

of the first light.

 

 

©cmheuer, 3/2023

UPHEAVAL

 We balance on a transient tightrope strung across

          a crevasse too wide to bridge,

We sway in a catastrophic wind listening

          for earthen tremblors and volcanic explosions,

We tremble from visions of apocalyptic

wild fires, tornadoes, droughts, and floods,

We scan the horizon for an asteroid impact  

          like the K-Pg mass extinction event,

We calculate that the sun will become a red giant

          in five billion years and engulf the earth,

We hypothesize the end of our universe and

          baryonic matter,

But above all we sense the aggression and violence

         of our own kind whose maniacal dance

wobbles the high wire and causes us to

lose our equilibrium and slip into oblivion

like virtual particles

popping into and out of existence.

 

©cmheuer, March, 2023