Willow
Out walking one autumn blue sky day,
I stopped at a willow tree,
bell of breathing light.
The long wands moved in the wind
and the leaves sifted light and shade.
Bright and dark, enthreaded,
fell like sunlit rain,
like twill across my loom,
warp of joy, weft of pain—
beauty in full sight
and yet, as if bereft, I craved it.
North, the tree was dull,
dishevelled like a nest of bramble.
South, it swayed and drifted,
spilling light—a fountain in the wind.
It wove,
wove and unwove
its fall of shimmering quills.
Parting the weave, I entered
and drew around me quilted light—
angelic substance visible in our domain,
not kept or lost.
A blueish sun collected in the skein,
the sky rained down
and all was still.
Deep and deeper in I went,
stood worldless in the billowing light.
Jane Galin writes poetry and essays. Her work has appeared in Spiritus, Image Journal, JAMA, As You Were, Northampton Poetry Review, Thrive; An Anthology, and elsewhere.
She lives in Portland, Oregon.
