A reconciliation between
inner and outer storms comes
during a walk in early spring,

first warm day in a winter while,
pushing too warm for
these clothes; princess pine

beginning to push past
the winter leaves toward
long missed late day sun.

Stopped on the path by the sight
of a wide spray of fallen oak leaves splayed
upon the softly crumbled trunk

of a tree — not their source, one that itself fell years
before, its surface riddled now with ant-roads,
its flesh chewed and weathered nearly into sand.

The light upon the leaves bleaches them
to a pale brown. No doubt brittle to the touch
from death, but from here they look like

a snap shot of banners or kerchiefs
flying in a brisk wind — image from
a pageant, renaissance fantasy; then

I shake myself free, let nature be free
of my interpretation — layers here of past
becoming slowly, unstoppably new;

one more step and into view comes
more princess pine, green rising
by the side of and fed by the rotten trunk.