I am bare branches (Day 632)

I am bare branches, streaked with moss 

and damp-darkened, north-facing shadows.

I am that secret place—there, all the way up 

—where a bird's nest rested securely through 

a summer’s worth of thunderstorms, and 

where, now, only a few strands of yellowing 

weeds waver in the wind.

I am a shade-strewn evening porch, overlooking 

an emerald expanse of tender grass, 

soon to be blanketed by a crystal sheet of ice 

or the white-hot kiss of winter's first snow.

I am the unwritten poem, rising, subsiding, 

always just out of sight, known but unrecognizable, 

a season of shifting light and midnight frost, 

of dreams lost to the joy of waking, and, this time, 

I am taking my own sweet time.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Hernán Piñera/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)